Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: scarcity and frontiers
- 2 The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)
- 3 The Rise of Cities (from 3000 BC to 1000 AD)
- 4 The Emergence of the World Economy (from 1000 to 1500)
- 5 Global Frontiers and the Rise of Western Europe (from 1500 to 1914)
- 6 The Atlantic Economy Triangular Trade (from 1500 to 1860)
- 7 The Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (from 1870 to 1914)
- 8 The Age of Dislocation (from 1914 to 1950)
- 9 The Contemporary Era (from 1950 to the present)
- 10 Epilogue: the Age of Ecological Scarcity?
- Index
- References
8 - The Age of Dislocation (from 1914 to 1950)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: scarcity and frontiers
- 2 The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)
- 3 The Rise of Cities (from 3000 BC to 1000 AD)
- 4 The Emergence of the World Economy (from 1000 to 1500)
- 5 Global Frontiers and the Rise of Western Europe (from 1500 to 1914)
- 6 The Atlantic Economy Triangular Trade (from 1500 to 1860)
- 7 The Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (from 1870 to 1914)
- 8 The Age of Dislocation (from 1914 to 1950)
- 9 The Contemporary Era (from 1950 to the present)
- 10 Epilogue: the Age of Ecological Scarcity?
- Index
- References
Summary
In November 1918 the first world war terminated; in September 1939 the second world war began … It was an age of dislocation and experiment … The dislocation stands out clearly. In all of these twenty-one years there were not more than five, the five which ended the twenties, that men felt to be years of normal prosperity.
(Lewis 1949, pp. 11–12)Introduction
As the above quote indicates, the economist W. A. Lewis dubbed the twenty-one-year period from 1918 to 1939 as the “age of dislocation and experiment.” However, as the Latin American economic historian Rosemary Thorp has suggested, Lewis’s description could easily be extended to 1945 or 1950, and thus also encompasses the three “international shocks” experienced by the world economy: World War I, the Great Depression and World War II.
Certainly, the years 1914 to 1950 witnessed dramatic disruptions to the global economy. As the previous three chapters have suggested, since 1500 the world had embarked on an unprecedented phase of Global Frontier expansion, which reached its apex with the remarkable forty-year “Golden Age” of global resource-based development from 1870 to 1914. But the outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought the latter period of global growth in trade, resource exploitation and new economic opportunities to a close. The ensuing thirty-five-year period, which included the Great Depression and World War II, further added to global economic disruptions during the “Age of Dislocation.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Scarcity and FrontiersHow Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation, pp. 463 - 551Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010