Globalizing the History of the First World War: Economic Approaches

Abstract

This historiographical review offers an overview of new approaches to the global history of the First World War. It first considers how, over the last decade, there has been a move to emphasize the war's imperial dimensions: in reconsiderations of the war in Africa, the experience of soldiers and workers from across Europe's colonial empires, and the German ‘global strategy’ of fomenting unrest within the Allied empires. It then suggests that new global histories of the First World War give further attention to its economic aspects, particularly in two ways: first, by recovering understudied global financial aspects of the war, including the effects of the 1914 financial crisis and wartime inflation on economies and societies far outside of Europe; and second, by investigating wartime histories of primary production, both in colonial territories and sovereign states in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It argues that these approaches can offer an important corrective to common assumptions that the First World War led to a dramatic break with pre-war globalizing trends.

Essential Business: The Flu, the War, and the Economy

“…Wartime inflation was global, implicating the economies of both neutral states and combatants. 59 ) If this explanation is correct, then rather than readily finding jobs in essential industries, workers displaced by the flu had to compete with those laid off due to the recession in the civilian market.…”