Product Description
"Globalization" is here. Signified by an increasingly close economic interconnection that has led to profound political and social change around the world, the process seems irreversible. In this book, however, Harold James provides a sobering historical perspective, exploring the circumstances in which the globally integrated world of an earlier era broke down under the pressure of unexpected events.
James examines one of the great historical nightmares of the twentieth century: the collapse of globalism in the Great Depression. Analyzing this collapse in terms of three main components of global economics--capital flows, trade, and international migration--James argues that it was not simply a consequence of the strains of World War I but resulted from the interplay of resentments against all these elements of mobility, as well as from the policies and institutions designed to assuage the threats of globalism. Could it happen again? There are significant parallels today: highly integrated systems are inherently vulnerable to collapse, and world financial markets are vulnerable and unstable. While James does not foresee another Great Depression, his book provides a cautionary tale in which institutions meant to save the world from the consequences of globalization--think WTO and IMF, in our own time--ended by destroying both prosperity and peace.
(20011101)
Average Customer Review:
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliantly written and scary, 2002-07-05
This well written, documented and academic book reads like a novel. Author explains how the British global-led economy was structured in the 19th century, its weaknesses and how it unraveled in the 1920s and 1930s. He reviews monetary policies, banking instability in the pre- and Depression era, trade and its collapse, the rising reaction against international migration starting in the 1890s and culminating after World War I, the opposition between nationalism and capital that existed after 1929 and finally assesses if a new depression could occur again. Despite the dates, the events it describes look so familiar to us today that it sends shivers down the spine.Written in 2001, the author was still optimistic in his conclusions saying that unlike the 1930s, nobody today was challenging global finacial orthodoxy. But since Ben Laden destroyed the World Trade Center, Argentina has collapsed like in the 1930s, Brazil is on the path to renege its debt just like in 1931, many scandals have shaken Corporate America, stocks have fallen to after-September 11 levels. Le Pen, a right-extremist was a contender to Chirac in the French presidential elections. Migrations have become a hot debate in Europe. The Bush Administration like the Hoover one puts barriers on international trade (steel), does not participate in multilateral debates (UN, Climate, International Court) damaging the system of multilateral organizations, debates and trade. These collapsed in the 1930s to be replaced by bilaterel relations with the known consequences: a global depression and a global war.