The New Deal
A Global History
Publication Year: 2016
The New Deal: A Global History provides a radically new interpretation of a pivotal period in US history. The first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context, the book compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe—not just in Europe but also in Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. Work creation, agricultural intervention, state planning, immigration policy, the role of mass media, forms of political leadership, and new ways of ruling America's colonies—all had parallels elsewhere and unfolded against a backdrop of intense global debates.
By avoiding the distortions of American exceptionalism, Kiran Klaus Patel shows how America's reaction to the Great Depression connected it to the wider world. Among much else, the book explains why the New Deal had enormous repercussions on China; why Franklin D. Roosevelt studied the welfare schemes of Nazi Germany; and why the New Dealers were fascinated by cooperatives in Sweden—but ignored similar schemes in Japan.
Ultimately, Patel argues, the New Deal provided the institutional scaffolding for the construction of American global hegemony in the postwar era, making this history essential for understanding both the New Deal and America's rise to global leadership.
Published by: Princeton University Press
Series: America in the World
Cover
Acknowledgments
ThiS Book haS itS oriGinS in Zurich, where on a cold December day several years ago, I had a couple of drinks with Harvard’s Sven Beckert. Sven asked me if I was interested in writing a book for a series that he had recently set up with Jeremi Suri. Sven settled the bill. I felt that I had to pay him back...
Prologue
Franklin Delano RooSevelt hated flyinG. Having traveled to Europe by ship frequently during his childhood, he spent almost all his prewar presidency either in Washington, DC, on his beloved family estate in Hyde Park, NY, or crisscrossing the United States by train, ship, and car. Rarely did he...
1. A Global Crisis
“In the large view, we have reached a higher degree of comfort and security than ever existed before in the history of the world.”1 Herbert Hoover’s inaugural address very much summarizes the spirit in America in spring 1929. Also in 1929, journalist Charles Merz proclaimed that a “brand-new America...
2. In Search of New Beginnings
The Great Depression was not just a crisis of capitalism and laissez-faire more specifically but also of existing political orders. Liberal democracy in particular saw itself in retreat, and some already heard its knell. At the level of political ideas, British political theorist Michael Oakeshott noted at the...
3. Into the Vast External Realm
Early New Deal action largely concentrated on domestic intervention. While Hoover had mainly blamed the outside world for the Depression, his successor was acutely aware of the structural difficulties and institutional inadequacies within the United States that had deepened and, to some extent...
4. Redefining Boundaries
Even if the sense of utter crisis and emergency had receded, the New Deal of the mid- 1930s was still awash in ideas and initiatives. Roosevelt and his entourage continued to see government as the remedy for the structural problems of modern industrial capitalism. State action building on domestic...
5. The American World Order
In the long global perspective, the New Deal had many lives—and died just about as many deaths. It received its first blow in late 1937, when the momentum of domestic reform petered out. The outbreak of World War II less than two years later seemed to announce its death still louder, and overall...
E-ISBN-13: 9781400873623
E-ISBN-10: 1400873622
Print-ISBN-13: 9780691149127
Print-ISBN-10: 0691149127
Page Count: 456
Publication Year: 2016
Series Title: America in the World
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