Globalization Then and Now: International Political Economy Across the 19th and 20th Centuries

By several measures, the global economy was more fully integrated in 1900 than it is today. Thus, the current march of globalization is neither inevitable nor unprecedented. In this course, we will examine the foreign economic policies of the major powers (particularly the United States and Great Britain) that fostered these two eras of globalization. We will also consider the normative arguments made by both the advocates (Jefferson, Peel, Hull, and Sachs) and the critics (Hamilton, McKinley, Keynes, and Rodrik) of market integration. We will use this perspective to understand and evaluate current trends in the international political economy.