The article draws parallels between the current state of globalization and the period before World War I. Both eras witnessed high points of globalization driven by technological advancements, leading to increased interconnectedness and international trade.
The article highlights that both periods of peak globalization ended disastrously. The first, before World War I, collapsed due to the war and the Great Depression, leading to a sharp decline in international trade and the rise of authoritarian movements. Similarly, the second period of globalization, which started after the collapse of Communism, is also facing a backlash and anxieties about its future.
The article argues that the forces driving globalization, while offering economic benefits and convenience, can also lead to instability and resentment. The key points being the impact of technological advancements on international trade and migration, the cyclical nature of globalization, and the potential for its collapse to cause significant social and political upheaval. The comparison with the pre-World War I era serves to highlight the risks associated with unchecked globalization.
Before World War I, globalization was at a high point. Advances in technology, including the steamship and the telegraph, allowed people, goods and news to cross borders with extraordinary speed. Migration boomed. The economist John Maynard Keynes, conjuring an Edwardian version of Amazon, recalled how “the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep.” After drinking his tea (from India), sweetened by sugar (from Jamaica), that Londoner might later enjoy toast (made from wheat grown in Kansas), butter (from New Zealand), beef (from Argentina) and oranges (from Palestine).
Many people believed that this kind of internationalism was irreversible and that the interdependence of the global economy would guarantee peace and prosperity, even if it was also unsettling. It was an age, Keynes said, in which, to the Londoner, “the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper.”
At the end of the 20th century, the world experienced the second great acceleration of globalization. Communism collapsed. The European Union expanded. Soon, China joined the world trading system. Migration once again surged. Today over 15 percent of people living in America were born abroad, surpassing a previous high of 14.8 percent in 1890. As was true then, many observers a century later saw globalization as an unstoppable and inherently positive force. The great-grandchildren of that Londoner, drinking their Indian tea in bed, followed world news on TikTok and had toast (topped with Mexican avocados) delivered to their doorstep, using phones designed in California and assembled in China.
Both moments of peak globalization came crashing down, in epochal, generation-defining ways. In 1913 the value of exported goods made up 14 percent of the world economy. By 1933, shattered by World War I and the Great Depression, it had slumped to 6 percent, and it did not recover until the 1970s. The backlash propelled the rise of right-wing authoritarian and fascist movements that promised to reverse or seize control of the forces of globalism. It ended in a catastrophic world war.
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