Manipulating Hegemony: State Power, Labour and the Marshall Plan in Britain. By Rhiannon Vickers. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 185. $69.95.

Abstract

The precise role of the Marshall Plan in stimulating economic recovery in Western Europe after 1945 remains problematical. One thing, however, is for sure: writing about the Plan has given employment to many scholars. Over 50 years on, the scholarly literature is extensive and growing. Happily, a consensus of sorts has emerged. Firstly regarding the overall purpose and impact of the Plan, the New Left's contention of naked American imperialism has been replaced by the view that Marshall aid was, in Geir Lundestad's words, an instance of “empire by consent.” Secondly, it has been established that while the role of Marshall aid in fueling the West European economy was marginal, that margin was critical. The workings of what Charles Maier has called “a consensual American hegemony” have been investigated in several key works. Michael J. Hogan's The Marshall Plan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987) has shown how and why the British Labour government fought so tenaciously against America's vision fot the post-World War II world, concluding that “the Marshall Plan had aimed to remake Europe in an American mode. In the end America was made the European way” (p. 445). Anthony Carew's Labour under the Marshall Plan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987) is equally ambitious, focusing on American initiatives and on their reception of four major European countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Britain); Carew does inquire in detail how the British Labour leaders and Trades Union movement influenced the Marshall program. In this context Manipulating Hegemony is an important new study, because it offers the first in-depth scrutiny of British responses.