Until the “Big Brexit” (1914–1945)

Abstract

Two years had passed since Mario Götze’s defining goal and on July 13, 2016, the sunshine was still hitting the lawn of the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. But world attention was on partially clouded London. This chapter presents the convoluted sequence of events—the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Wilsonian self-determination, the Great Depression, and the Second World War—that, starting in 1914 and through 1945, brought economic globalization under British hegemony and first wave democracy to an end. Conversely, a global wave of authoritarian and revisionist regimes came instead, starting in the 1920s and peaking during the 1950s and 1960s. Autarkic or regulated international economic policies kept economic globalization at bay since 1929, while redistributive domestic economic policies nurtured domestic markets and reduced social inequality.