https://padlet.com/Alina_Yarmoshchuk/8iufl7leuuo945tb Topic: Industrial Revolution, World Wars, Cold War, and growing Global Economy (1800-2015) en-us 2022-03-15 16:25:23 UTC 2025-10-10 15:21:24 UTC hello@padlet.com Alina_Yarmoshchuk https://padlet.com/Alina_Yarmoshchuk/8iufl7leuuo945tb/wish/2096346729 The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, which involved the introduction of new technologies and the reorganization of the labor force, had a profound influence on the global political economy, indicating the beginning of a new historical era of Capitalism domination.

The new historical era began with Britain taking the role of hegemonic world power, primarily owing to the growth of European knowledge increased by the age of Enlightenment, the rise of a liberal state, creation of a free labor market, and favorable international position due to naval supremacy. While other countries, including Germany, the US, and Japan, were on their way to catching up with Britain's rapid development, the period of the dominance of British powers in the international system was called 'Pax Britannica', or 'British Peace'. 

Pax Britannica attempted to alter the international system by the establishment of a range of international arrangements, which included gold standard, free trade, and the balance of power. The fixation of foreign currencies in relation to gold, the free trade system operating on the basis of comparative advantage, and balance of power aiming to prevent conflicts by the arrangements referred to as 'Concert of Europe', shifts in alliances, and the disregard of states' ideologies and domestic public opinion were the major global political-economic policies designed to preserve the existing system and avoid any military confrontations.

However, Pax Britannica while analyzing the world's politics and developing the required policies failed to consider new waves of European imperialism and ignored large violence cases taking place due to the growth of the international market, which in addition to a range of other political, economic, and social reasons led to wars and consequent economic disorder.

Thus, the First World War has disrupted trade and finance patterns, resulting in the change of trading partners, switch of the domestic production from the export sector to war production, and the abandonment of the gold standard. Following the devastating consequences of the First World War, WW2 had even more damaging results, including the large-scale destruction of property and infrastructure and loss of production and export capacity. This, eventually, has led to the shift of power from Europe to the US, the dominance of the US in the international finance field, and the creation or elaboration of welfare states in western Europe.

The post-war time could be described as the division of Europe into two competing camps and the beginning of the Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. The Western economic system was characterized by the pledging process of both economic and military resources, the creation of a set of institutions to manage the world economy, dominance of liberalism, legalism, and multilateralism, and prevalence of neoliberal ideas in liberal economic policy. On the other hand, the communist political economy was based on the idea of elimination of private property and allocation of resources through central planning of the state, which could have been seen in the models created by the Soviet Union and China, both of which have reached their limit of growth and, consequently, gör abandoned by the 1990s.

The post-Cold War era could be described by three major trends: the competition between rival forms of capitalism and its general extension, the Information Revolution and its impact, in addition to the emergence and ongoing developments in the field of international organizations, including UN, EU, WTO, OECD, NAFTA, NGOs, etc.]]> 2022-03-15 16:25:46 UTC https://padlet.com/Alina_Yarmoshchuk/8iufl7leuuo945tb/wish/2096346729