Abstract: This book surveys the main events in the international economy from the outbreak of the First World War to the end of the Second World War: a period of time variously defined as the “globalization backlash”, the “Second Thirty Years War”, or simply “the World in Depression”. The book starts with the unfortunate peace settlement after the First World War and progresses to the ensuing hyperinflations and financial crises; from the attempts at rebuilding an international economic and monetary order in the face of rapid technical progress and productivity growth to the policy mistakes that brought about the Great Depression — the most devastating economic depression in human history; from wide-spread long-term unemployment to overall autarky and a second global conflagration. The opening chapter puts the interwar years in the long-term quantitative perspective of economic development over the whole of the 20th century while the final chapter highlights the long-run impact of the interwar years on the growth and policy features of the prosperous decades that followed the end of the Second World War.

Keywords: interwar economy, world wars, Great Depression, financial crises, hyperinflation, globalization, unemployment