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Before 1870 different parts of the small continent of Europe had specialized in their own products; but, taken as a whole, it was substantially self-subsistent. And its population was adjusted to this state of affairs.

After 1870 there was developed on a large scale an unprecedented situation, and the economic condition of Europe became during the next fifty years unstable and peculiar. The pressure of population on food, which had already been balanced by the accessibility of supplies from America, became for the first time in recorded history definitely reversed. As numbers increased, food was actually easier to secure. Larger proportional returns from an increasing scale of production became true of agriculture as well as industry. With the growth of the European population there were more emigrants on the one hand to till the soil of the new countries, and, on the other, more workmen were available in Europe to prepare the industrial products and capital goods which were to maintain the emigrant populations in their new homes, and to build the railways and ships which were to make accessible to Europe food and raw products from distant sources. Up to about 1900 a unit of labor applied to industry yielded year by year a purchasing power over an increasing quantity of food. It is possible that about the year 1900 this process began to be reversed, and a diminishing yield of Nature to man’s effort was beginning to reassert itself. But the tendency of cereals to rise in real cost was balanced by other improvements; and—one of many novelties—the resources of tropical Africa then for the first time came into large employ, and a great traffic in oil-seeds began to bring to the table of Europe in a new and cheaper form one of the essential foodstuffs of mankind. In this economic Eldorado, in this economic Utopia, as the earlier economists would have deemed it, most of us were brought up.

That happy age lost sight of a view of the world which filled with deep-seated melancholy the founders of our Political Economy. Before the eighteenth century mankind entertained no false hopes. To lay the illusions which grew popular at that age’s latter end, Malthus disclosed a Devil. For half a century all serious economical writings held that Devil in clear prospect. For the next half century he was chained up and out of sight. Now perhaps we have loosed him again.

What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914! The greater part of the population, it is true, worked hard and lived at a low standard of comfort, yet were, to all appearances, reasonably contented with this lot. But escape was possible, for any man of capacity or character at all exceeding the average, into the middle and upper classes, for whom life offered, at a low cost and with the least trouble, conveniences, comforts, and amenities beyond the compass of the richest and most powerful monarchs of other ages. The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep; he could at the same moment and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world, and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospective fruits and advantages; or be could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend. He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighboring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalization of which was nearly complete in practice.

It will assist us to appreciate the character and consequences of the Peace which we have imposed on our enemies, if I elucidate a little further some of the chief unstable elements already present when war broke out, in the economic life of Europe.

I. Population

In 1870 Germany had a population of about 40,000,000. By 1892 this figure had risen to 50,000,000, and by June 30, 1914, to about 68,000,000. In the years immediately preceding the war the annual increase was about 850,000, of whom an insignificant proportion emigrated.[1] This great increase was only rendered possible by a far-reaching transformation of the economic structure of the country. From being agricultural and mainly self-supporting, Germany transformed herself into a vast and complicated industrial machine, dependent for its working on the equipoise of many factors outside Germany as well as within. Only by operating this machine, continuously and at full blast, could she find occupation at home for her increasing population and the means of purchasing their subsistence from abroad. The German machine was like a top which to maintain its equilibrium must spin ever faster and faster.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which grew from about 40,000,000 in 1890 to at least 50,000,000 at the outbreak of war, the same tendency was present in a less degree, the annual excess of births over deaths being about half a million, out of which, however, there was an annual emigration of some quarter of a million persons.

To understand the present situation, we must apprehend with vividness what an extraordinary center of population the development of the Germanic system had enabled Central Europe to become. Before the war the population of Germany and Austria-Hungary together not only substantially exceeded that of the United States, but was about equal to that of the whole of North America. In these numbers, situated within a compact territory, lay the military strength of the Central Powers. But these same numbers—for even the war has not appreciably diminished them—if deprived of the means of life, remain a hardly less danger to European order.

European Russia increased her population in a degree even greater than Germany—from less than 100,000,000 in 1890 to about 150,000,000 at the outbreak of war; and in the year immediately preceding 1914 the excess of births over deaths in Russia as a whole was at the prodigious rate of two millions per annum. This inordinate growth in the population of Russia, which has not been widely noticed in England, has been nevertheless one of the most significant facts of recent years.

The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists. Thus the extraordinary occurrences of the past two years in Russia, that vast upheaval of Society, which has overturned what seemed most stable—religion, the basis of property, the ownership of land, as well as forms of government and the hierarchy of classes—may owe more to the deep influences of expanding numbers than to Lenin or to Nicholas; and the disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

II. Organization

BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS NOVEMBER 21-22 2011: WORLD ECONOMY

November 22, 2011 on 3:47 pm | In Economics, Financial, Globalization, History, Research | Comments Off

Central bankers’ speeches for 21 and 22 November now available‏

Press, Service (press@bis.org)

Tue 11/22/11

Central bankers’ speeches for 22 November 2011

now available on the BIS website

Gill Marcus: Assessing the risks to the inflation outlook – the challenges to monetary policy in highly uncertain times
Bojan Marković: Macroeconomic developments in Serbia
Jens Weidmann: The world economy in transition – a European perspective
Duvvuri Subbarao: The challenge of food inflation
Daniel Mminele: A delicate balancing act – how to reconcile upside medium term inflation risks with near term growth concerns

Central bankers’ speeches for 21 November 2011

now available on the BIS website

William C Dudley: Securing the recovery and building for the future
William C Dudley: The national and regional economic outlook
José De Gregorio: Capital flows and the interaction between macroprudential policy and monetary policy
Mario Draghi: Continuity, consistency and credibility
Guy Debelle: The present and possible future of secured issuance

All speeches from 1997 onwards are available from the BIS website at:

http://www.bis.org/list/cbspeeches/index.htm.

Communications

Bank for International Settlements

E-mail: press@bis.org

Website: www.bis.org

Phone: +41 61 280 8188

Bank for International Settlements (BIS)

Central bankers’ speeches for 21 and 22 November now available‏

http://www.bis.org/list/cbspeeches/index.htm
Press, Service (press@bis.org)

Tue 11/22/11

INSIDE THE NAZI DEATH FACTORIES: TWO BOOKS

November 20, 2011 on 5:03 pm | In Books, History | Comments Off

“THE EXPANSION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY”: HEDLEY BULL BOOK

November 18, 2011 on 9:37 am | In Books, Development, Globalization, History, Research, United Kingdom, World-System | Comments Off

The Expansion of international society

edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson

The Expansion of international society / edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson

Oxford : Clarendon Press,,
479 pages 1985, 1984 English Book

Creator

Bull, Hedley, 1932-1985

Subjects

International relations.; World politics.; International society.

Contents

European international society and its expansion / Adam Watson
The military factor in European expansion / Michael Howard
Europe in the world economy / Patrick O’Brien
Russia and the European States system / Adam Watson
Spain and the Indies / Michael Donelan
British and Russian relations with Asian governments in the nineteenth century / David Gillard
European states and African political communities / Hedley Bull
The emergence of a universal international society / Hedley Bull
New states in the Americas / Adam Watson
The Ottoman Empire and the European States system / Thomas Naff
China‘s entry into international society / Gerrit W. Gong
Japan‘s entry into international society / Hidemi Suganami
The era of the mandates system and the non-European world / Wm. Roger Louis.
The revolt against the West / Hedley Bull
The emergence of the third world / Peter Lyon
Racial equality / R.J. Vincent
China and the international order / Coral Bell
India and the international order : retreat from idealism / Gopal Krishna
Africa entrapped : between the Protestant ethic and the legacy of Westphalia / Ali Mazrui
Islam in the international order / James Piscatori
The Soviet Union and the third world : from anti-imperialism to counter-imperialism / Richard Löwenthal
France : adjustment to change / Christopher M. Andrew
A new international disorder / Elie Kedourie
The expansion of international society : the consequences for the law of nations / Ian Brownlie
Diplomacy today / Michael Palliser
The international order in a multicultural world / Adda Bozeman
Unity and diversity in contemporary world culture / Ronald Dore.