The Bretton Woods system of managed currencies and fixed exchange rates began at a 1936 meeting of the Allied powers. The immediate impetus for the gathering was geopolitical: Germany’s new Luftwaffe and its invasion of the Rhineland augured war, and goldbugs — whether they knew it or not — needed France’s government to stand.

So Roosevelt convened his allies, hoping to convince the British government to let Leon Blum’s newly elected socialist government devalue the franc.

The storied meeting’s long-term outcome is better known: the Tripartite Agreement to intervene in currency markets laid the groundwork for the Bretton Woods conference, and the new era of global economic governance that would persist until 1973.