Order and Rivalry
Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War

Traces the formation and development of multilateral trade structures in the aftermath of the First World War.

Madeleine Lynch Dungy (Author)

9781009308878, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2025

334 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.484 kg

'A sophisticated, scholarly, and highly original study of the European contribution to the making of international trade policy and regulation in the 1920s … This book is based on a wealth of archival and printed primary sources, imaginatively deployed. It deserves to take its place among the key scholarly contributions to the wider revival of the historiography of the League of Nations while also providing an illuminating study of visions of European unity and of global trade policy.' Anthony Howe, European History Quarterly

The First World War transformed the legal and geopolitical framework for international trade by decentring Europe in global markets. Order and Rivalry traces the formation and development of multilateral trade structures in the aftermath of the First World War in response to the marginalization of Europe in the world economy, the use of private commerce as a tool of military power and the collapse of empires across Central and Eastern Europe. In this accessible study, Madeleine Lynch Dungy highlights the 1920s as a pivotal transition phase between the network of bilateral trade treaties that underpinned the first globalization of the late nineteenth century and the institutionalised regime of international governance after 1945. Focusing on the League of Nations, she shows that this institution's legacy was not to initiate a linear forward march towards today's World Trade Organization, but rather to frame an open-ended and conflictual process of experimentation that is still ongoing.

Introduction
1. Organizing globalization
2. The world economy at war
3. Planning the peace
4. From bilateral to multilateral trade treaties
5. Studying the world economy, from Kiel and from Geneva
6. European unity and security
7. The International Chamber of Commerce and the politics of business
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]