Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
Tara Zahra (2023)
W.W. Norton & Company
A historical analysis of the emergence of anti-globalism and new forms of mass politics in Europe between the two world wars. It argues that these movements were the dominant ideologies in Europe and the driving forces behind political upheaval during this time.
It's unique thesis explores how the anxieties and grievances of ordinary people led to the rise of nationalist movements, protectionism, and isolationism, challenging the post-World War I order and ultimately contribution to the outbreak of World War II.
Summary
End of the Belle Epoch
By 1900, the age of militarism and imperialism had become mere amusement.
An era of rapid technological change swept the world improving living standards of most of humanity beginning in the 1860s.
This was the tail-end of a secular wave of globalization that began with the voyages of discovery in the late 15th century by the Spanish and Portuguese. These adventures had sparked colonial conquest and the expansion of trade networks. However, late 19th century Industrial Revolution technologies would greatly accelerate this globalization process. Steamships, rail networks, and the telegraph revolutionized concepts of time and space.
Prior to the start of the First World War, even most anti-globalist radicals rarely sought total isolation from the global economy.
No one spoke of autarky; instead, any "anti-globalist" simply sought globalization on better terms.
The Pax-Britannica global order buttressed this rapid globalizational change. It underpinned international finance through its gold standard currency regime which greatly facilitated global trade and investment across the world.
However, because of this rapid change, two new threats began to appear:
One, there were increasing risks from growing interdependence as countries stretched their comparative advantages without appropriately hedging the risks of future disorder or global disintegration.
Two, there was widespread complacency on the unequal gains from trade as wealth inequality greatly increased causing imbalances in across societies.
The anti-globalization movement had been building for quite some time; it did not appear suddenly.
Despite many economists of the 1990s maintaining globalization as a natural economic process, the history of inter-war Europe made clear that globalization's natural state is, in fact, exemplified by pauses and reversals.
The First World War would bring internationalism to rock bottom.
Troubles in the Aftermath of the Great War
As the guns of the Great War fell silent, fears of starvation, disease, migrants, refugees, and revolution spread across Europe and the Atlantic.
Anti-globalism gained mass following.
Dilemmas people debated during the interwar period were not about the term globalization, rather:
Freedom vs. dependence
Nationalism vs. internationalism
Autarky, self-sufficiency, and self-containment
Financial and resource interdependence of sovereign states greatly reduced their ability to control any shocks.
Ironically, the British gold standard, the currency regime that had provided stability to support increased trade, ultimately exacerbated problems when the economy crashed.
All states needed to adhere the standard in order "to play" in the global economy.
However, maintaining the currency peg forced them to take austere actions when crisis came. There was no option to devalue their currency to make exports more competitive and recover demand.
Instead, states had to resort to solutions such as lowering wages and cutting spending. This tightening of the money supply increased inequality. Banks made greater profits as capital became more expensive to acquire, but hurt badly those in debt as it became more expensive to service those debts.
The British currency regime had radically constrained the ability of governments to respond to economic crisis.
In response to this problem, the League of Nations made a valiant attempt at rebuilding the global economy by assisting in the reconstruction of nations that lay in ruin after the war.
But, these loans came with significant strings attached, so many states simply viewed the cost of belonging to the global economy as too high. "Fantasies of escaping this global system altogether or of gaining greater individual and national self-sufficiency within it intensified in this environment".
With the British empire waning and the United States still unwilling to lead, the message to states seemed to be to find their own way.
The Rise of Autarky
The Treaty of Versailles morphed views on imperialism.
For the wars losers, it was written proof of the need for self-sufficiency.
European imperial victors England and France had completely undermined a return to globalism based on the conditions they imposed on the Central powers. Much to the disagreement of the United States, the European Allied powers sought a restoration of their imperial holdings.
It all came back to food. The peace settlement destroyed the networks of regional and global trade created in the decades prior. The rather inhumane British strategy of the naval blockade of Germany and Austria-Hungary amplified the need for self-sufficiency.
Central Europe had been hit hardest; it had the greatest imperial debris.
Austria and Hungary each lost two-thirds of their territory, while Germany roughly twelve percent.
The Habsburg empire, in particular, had been a microcosm of the global economy. And consequently, it suffered the most as is imperial peripheries had now been severed from the metropolis in Vienna.
Its successor states after the dissolution of the empire were fragile democracies in need of international assistance from the vacuum left in the Habsburg collapse.
These former imperial peripheries, now neophyte states, found themselves amidst a troubled neighborhood of historically greater powers.
Pandemic as Convenient Excuse
Tragically, the 1918 Spanish Flu took roughly 21 million lives.
The pandemic became associated with the world of internationalism. Prior to the war, there had been no need for passports; however, governments took advantage of the opportunity to enact stricter anti-global policies - it was the perfect excuse.
The global economic downturn made this even easier.
It hadn't been difficult since most demanded immigration restrictions as a way to protect their jobs. Workers saw nationalism as a way to insulate themselves from the shocks of the global economy with the end goal of fairer economic redistribution.
Harnessing the Masses
Popular anti-globalism gained fervor from activists whose demands were taken up by political parties and states who responded with an intense backlash.
In response, populist leaders emerged to harness the grievances and provide new appealing visions of a better anti-global future. They expanded the franchise to gain more power; this had the effect of driving mass politics even further.
What had originally begun years earlier in the 19th century with the gradual expansion of suffrage, mass politics began to create spaces for new movements and parties.
These included parties on both the left and right: Socialist, Christian Socialist, populist, and nationalist platforms.
Politics happened in the streets, not just in the halls of parliaments.
Workers, women, colonial subjects, for the first time, were now eligible to cast votes. They were those most negatively affected by global integration and demanded change.
They were the victims of globalization.
These anti-globalists gained particular notoriety in states that had lost the war - Germany and Austria-Hungary. Vivid memories of the horrors of the Allied blockade prevented critical food supplies from reaching the population in which many civilians starved to death.
They felt deeply embittered, and no state could ignore the cries of its masses of citizens.
As populist political forces gained power, the followers of their anti-globalist platforms genuinely believed in the morality and benevolence of their own visions.
Germany, specifically, struggled to cope with the Versailles settlement: loss of colonies, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression. Everything pointed to further insolation as a way to deal with globalization's vicious blows.
National Self-Sufficiency Proved Unworkable
All across the political spectrum spoke of greater autonomy from the global economy.
Free trade and the global division of labor was now being criticized as English imperialism. States sought to free themselves from the "chains of the global economy and become independent."
Autarky, or national self-sufficiency was the only true spiritual freedom.
Countries such as Germany and Italy began a process of internal colonization whereby city dwelling residents would "return to the land" with the intent to achieve self-sufficiency in food supply. Borderlands, previously neglected, now became crucial pieces of the national mythos that needed to be cultivated.
The Nazis would fetishize the rural farming family with an obsession of the single-family home which was the antithesis to modern cities.
Many of the new small states created after the war after Wilsonian self-determination, ironically saw benefits from belonging to a powerful empire. This would ensure stable resource trade and protection. No one wanted to be bound by the norms of international law nor international organizations and treaties - especially Germany.
However, whatever form of autarkic development model states took, the goal of self-sufficiency proved simply unattainable. Many of the internal colonial settlements had been abandoned and found unworkable.
In 1933, there was a last ditch effort to save the world economy. The World Economic Conference met in London to warn the sixty-six states that gather on that day of the dangers of nationalism and the perils of self-sufficiency on economic development.
Unfortunately, among an atmosphere of gloom and despair, it was simply too late.
None of the countries could agree on anything, and there was no one to lead them.
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