Allied Maritime Transport Council

The Allied Maritime Transport Council (AMTC) was an international agency created during World War I to coordinate shipping between the allied powers of France, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States. The council was formed at a conference in Paris in November 1917, with each nation appointing its respective ministers (or delegates) in charge of shipping to the council. The representatives were:

• Robert Cecil and Sir Joseph Maclay for Great Britain;
• Étienne Clémentel and Louis Loucheur for France;
• Giovanni Villa and Silvio Crespi for Italy; and
• Raymond B. Stevens and George Rublee for the United States

The AMTC had four executive committees for charging, imports, tonnage and statistics. In the functionally leading Charging Committee James Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet - civil servants for their respective countries Great Britain and France - were working together.

The Transport Council existed until March 1919, when it was merged with the Supreme Economic Council. Its executive committees were disbanded.

Salter and Monnet called their business in the AMTC ‘international administration’. In more critical terms the Transport Council worked like a cartel, just run by states, trying to eliminate the economic and logistic competition between the partners. So the organization tried to hold prices down, pooled the allied tonnage and coordinated the allied logistics with substantial rationalization effects.

Bibliography

• James Arthur Salter: Allied Shipping Control, Oxford 1921.
• Jean Monnet: Memoirs, London 1978.
• Marc McClure, "Earnest Endeavors: The Life and Public Work of George Rublee", Greenwood 2003.