Mark Metzler

Cavaliers and Conservatives: Economic Liberalism and Keynesianism in Antebellum Japan
“Monetary questions were central to the inner operations of political and economic power and were intertwined with virtually all of the greatest questions of Japan’s external relations,” writes Mark Metzler, a history professor in University of Texas, Austin, in his book Lever of Empire. A commendable effort to present a comprehensive history of Japan’s experience with the classical and interwar gold standards, Metzler’s study, part of the University of California Press’s series on “Twentieth Century Japan: The Emergence of a World Power”, makes extensive use of Japanese and US archival material to explore not only Japan’s focal place in the global dynamics of monetary economics but also the interplay of liberal-capitalist politics, proto-Keynesianism, and authoritarian nationalism in shaping Japanese economic history. Metzler’s informative and engaging narrative on Japan’s antebellum economic policy and financial diplomacy should prove to be accessible to both specialists and general readers alike.… (meer)