Dietmar Rothermund - The Global Impact of the Great Depression 1929-1939

Dietmar Rothermund broadens the conventional focus of analysis of the Great Depression to include its impact on the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book:

Dietmar Rothermund is Professor of South Asian History at the University of Heidelberg. He is the author of several books 1including An Economic History of India (1988) and, with Hermann Kulke, A History of India (1990).

First published 1996 by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by
Routledge
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.

Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing company

1996 Dietmar Rothermund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rothermund, Dietmar.
The Global impact of the Great Depression, 19291939/Dietmar
Rothermund.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Depressions1929Developing countries. 2. Developing
countriesEconomic conditions. 3. Economic history19181945.
I. Title
HB3717 1929.R658 1996
338.5'42-dc20 95-25780
CIP

ISBN 0-203-43019-0 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-73843-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-11818-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-11819-0 (pbk)

Global history is getting a great deal of attention at present. In contrast with the old concepts of universal history and world history which devote a great deal of attention to the origin of civilisations and the transmission of cultural traditions, this new concept encompasses the history of human interaction which at present manifests itself in a highly complex world system. But global history is not limited to the most recent past. It attempts to integrate all fields of historical and anthropological research which contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of human interaction. It transcends national history but it does not neglect the nation state as a unit of international cooperation and conflict.

The Great Depression was an alarming phenomenon of the breakdown of cooperation among nation states which then led to global conflict. While most studies have concentrated on the advanced industrial countries of the world which produced the depression and were also considered to be its major victims, its global impact has hardly attracted any attention. Global historiography is still in its infancy, but this little book may serve as a contribution to this new venture.

The awareness of the global impact of the Great Depression dawned upon me when I was working on the history of agrarian relations in India. I was amazed at the problems faced by the Indian peasantry in the 1930s and found out that there were parallels elsewhere. Turning to Charles Kindlebergers masterly survey TheWorld in Depression I found hardly a trace of these problems in his account. In 1978 I sent the first paper which I had produced on India in the Great Depression to him. He kindly replied that he knew next to nothing about Asia and encouraged me to go ahead with my work. I was puzzled by the general neglect of this subject in the relevant literature and made some of my German colleagues depression minded; they then designed some research projects and guided PhD students in this direction. We also published a volume of (German) essays in 1982 on the periphery (Africa, Asia, Latin America) in the Great Depression.

In the meantime I did further research and completed a monograph on India in the Great Depression, 1929-1939' which was published in 1992. While doing this I also collected more information on other countries as I did not want to present India as an isolated case. I devoted several lecture courses at Heidelberg University to this subject which finally added up to a small German textbook, published in 1993. This I showed to my publisher in London and by good fortune the text was sent to Professor Sidney Pollard for evaluation. I benefited from his constructive criticism and have tried to follow his suggestions in rewriting the text for the English edition. I must, of course, add the usual disclaimer: any errors or heretical views still to be found in the text should be attributed to me alone.

Writing such a global text is no easy task. My main aim was to put those countries on the map which have so far been neglected with regard to the study of the impact of the Great Depression. But as the depression originated in the industrial countries of the West, I had to take those countries into account, too. This I tried to do as briefly as possible so as not to duplicate Charles Kindlebergers work. I start with an introduction entitled Economics and the Depression in which I also refer to the blind spot in economic thought which has so far precluded the kind of study which I am presenting here. Then follows a chapter on the tragedy of the international gold standard which begins with the Golden Age of the time before the First World War and then describes the consequences of the return to the gold standard after the war. The subsequent chapter concerns the dilemma of war debts and reparations which further complicated international financial relations. The fourth chapter is devoted to agricultural production, because the overproduction of wheat greatly strained the international credit system and finally contributed to its breakdown. The prices of other crops were then affected by this fall in prices although the relations of supply and demand for them were stable and some of them did not even enter the international market. Since most of the second part of the book deals with the fate of the peasantry in the countries belonging to the periphery of the world economy, this chapter on agrarian production is of crucial importance.

With the chapter on the United States of America I begin the survey of the major countries of the world. I must warn the reader that this global survey inevitably has many gaps. I present case studies and do not provide an encyclopaedic coverage of all countries. After concluding that survey I pay attention to the political consequences of the depression and to the fateful sequence war-depression-war which marred about one third of the twentieth century and left a deep impression on global history.

In a text like this which presents a great deal of information and research in a nutshell almost every sentence would require a footnote. Since this would be too cumbersome I have omitted such references and added bibliographical notes at the end of the book. Their sequence parallels the text. The sub-headings which have been repeated in the notes enable the reader to locate the references. There is no separate bibliography, but the names of authors are listed in the index.