Between Europe and Empire: Sir Henry Strakosch, Expertise, and Reconstruction, 1914–1926
This presentation examines the role of economic expertise in shaping reconstruction efforts after
the First World War. It focuses on the contributions of Sir Henry Strakosch, who served as a
member of the League’s Financial Committee and as chairman of a major South African mining
corporation. In this sense, Strakosch operated at the intersection of two separate spheres, where
he aimed to balance the interests of both private corporations and international organizations.
Through formal conferences and informal advisory work, Strakosch ultimately shaped the
trajectory of monetary reform in Central Europe and the British Empire.
This project, more broadly, intervenes in the historiographies on interwar internationalism and
global economic governance. Recent works by historians have shown how to understand the
postwar economic institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, it is necessary to
understand how such efforts originated from the interwar years. The First World War proved to
be a major catalyst, not only in creating new international organizations, such as the League of
Nations, for sustaining international cooperation, but also in leading to a reevaluation of societal
views on expertise. Newly hired experts thus became involved in interwar projects of reinvention.
