Zach Carter: preference

Transcript context

…Early in his career, why was Keynes so keen to work in the India Office? He chose that. I don’t know if he was so keen. He really wanted to work in the Treasury Department, and it was sort of a disappointment to him. I think he’d come in second or third on his big exams at the end of his time at Cambridge. He’d wanted to be number one. He was recognized as this brilliant fellow, so I think he wanted to be at Treasury. He viewed the India Office as a bit of a disappointment, but I think one of the things he liked about working there was the way he could . . . He did seem to take to looking at the currency situation. He wrote a book. His first book is called Indian Currency and Finance, from 1912 or 1913. It’s his first real serious analysis of the gold standard and the way it works within the British Empire. I think he finds it intellectually engaging in certain respects, but it’s not as prestigious as being in Treasury, which is what he really wants, and he feels a little bit guilty about that sense of ambition. His friends in Bloomsbury think that working for the government is this embarrassing sort of political thing to do. He should be pursuing art and aesthetics and writing and philosophy instead of government. I don’t think he’s super happy at the India Office, but it is his introduction to the British bureaucracy, and I do think he enjoys being part of the British bureaucracy, and I do think he likes being a man of affairs who’s connected to the great problems of the day. I don’t think in the India Office he feels like he is attached to the grandest problems of the day. He feels like it’s a lesser-than kind of post. What do you think of the substance of Keynes’s work for the India Office?…

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