Historical overview and dynamics

Summary

To Europeans the dawn of the twentieth century was seen as a period of great progress and great prospect; as the ‘golden age’ of globalization. The mood is captured in the famous phrase by Sir Norman Angell in his best-selling book, The Great Illusion, published in 1910: ‘international finance is now so interdependent and tied to trade and industry, that political and military power can in reality do nothing’.

The great illusion was shattered four years later as Europe and the world entered a protracted period of seemingly endemic wars and revolutions that lasted well into the twentieth century, finally coming to an end with the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Empire.

By the beginning of the twenty-first century Europe achieved a level of peace and prosperity that could have been dreamed of in 1900, but would have appeared totally unfathomable a decade-and-a-half later and for the ensuing decades. Imagine being told in 1975, for example, that in thirty years Estonia would be a member of the European Community. Unimaginable!

Yet it did come to pass that by the end of the turbulent twentieth century, the vision of the founders of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), ‘world peace through world trade’, had finally been translated into reality for Europe. For the rest of the world, though prospects are encouraging, the jury of history remains out.