Financial crisis, contagion, and the British banking system between the world wars

Post-print draft dated 29 July 2010. Final version published by Routledge; available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/In a globalised world, when financial crisis strikes, can countries which are well-integrated into the world financial system escape? Recent experience suggests not. In the early 1930s, Britain's openness at the centre of the world financial system left it vulnerable, particularly to the central European financial crisis. Yet there was no financial crisis in Britain in 1931, rather an exchange-rate crisis, and sterling left the exchange-rate regime of the gold exchange standard. The most important financial institutions, the joint-stock commercial banks, the central part of the payments system, remained robust and contributed to the stability of the British economy