Rhetoric and Keynes' use of statistics in The Economic Consequences of the Peace

Larry Lepper

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2013, vol. 37, issue 2, 403-421

Abstract: Readers of Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace are usually struck by the book's rhetorical style. Since Étienne Mantoux's highly critical book, The Carthaginian Peace—or The Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes, a number of scholars have argued Keynes must have either deliberately exaggerated his statistics or, worse, have drawn on numbers that had somehow been falsified. However, on closer examination this appears a harsh judgement. Many of Keynes's statistics come directly from two Treasury memoranda, one dated 1916, the other 1918. Keynes's original handwritten manuscript survives in the King's College archives at Cambridge, in which sections of these memoranda are 'cut and pasted' directly into the manuscript. While Keynes, a Treasury official during the war, is undoubtedly the primary author, it is unlikely the entire Treasury would have been complicit in turning a blind eye to deliberately exaggerated or falsified figures. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Date: 2013
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