La Revue d’économie politique et la guerre de 1914 – 1918

The articles published by the Revue d?économie politique during these four years of war mark its immediate and unfailing commitment within the framework of the ?Sacred Union?. Year after year, the challenge of the Revue was to report on the economic dimension of the conflict. The most notable articles focused on comparison between the financial capacity of the Central Empires and that of France, because, ultimately, financial capacity determines military capacity If the gold standard was the dominant criterion for assessing this capacity, nevertheless the idea that money, in itself, was only the expression of a social consensus was nonetheless affirmed, thus opening the way to other conceptions of money. Another aspect that became apparent, even before the conflict was over and the treaties signed, was that after the war (victorious for the Alliés and Associés ? of course), it was not appropriate to exclude the Central Empires from relations economic and commercial. As Charles Gide declared in a 1917 article, for lasting peace it was also necessary to put aside ?all concerns about economic war?. Code JEL: B00, B19, N44