Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World
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- Synopsis
- The forgotten history of the liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists, and Christians who envisioned free trade as the necessary prerequisite for anti-imperialism and peaceToday, free trade is often associated with right-wing free marketeers. In Pax Economica, historian Marc-William Palen shows that free trade and globalisation in fact have roots in nineteenth-century left-wing politics. In this counterhistory of an idea, Palen explores how, beginning in the 1840s, left-wing globalists became the leaders of the peace and anti-imperialist movements of their age. By the early twentieth century, an unlikely alliance of liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists, and Christians envisioned free trade as essential for a prosperous and peaceful world order. Of course, this vision was at odds with the era&’s strong predilections for nationalism, protectionism, geopolitical conflict, and colonial expansion. Palen reveals how, for some of its most radical left-wing adherents, free trade represented a hard-nosed critique of imperialism, militarism, and war.Palen shows that the anti-imperial component of free trade was a phenomenon that came to encompass the political left wing within the British, American, Spanish, German, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Russian, French, and Japanese empires. The left-wing vision of a &“pax economica&” evolved to include supranational regulation to maintain a peaceful free-trading system—which paved the way for a more liberal economic order after World War II and such institutions as the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization. Palen&’s findings upend how we think about globalisation, free trade, anti-imperialism, and peace. Rediscovering the left-wing history of globalism offers timely lessons for our own era of economic nationalism and geopolitical conflict.
- Copyright:
- 2024
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 328 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691205137
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780691199320
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 09/03/25
- Copyrighted By:
- Princeton University Press
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Business and Finance, Politics and Government
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.