The future of globalization

ON THE MORNING of June z8, 1914, the world could rejoice in 6o years of extraordinary peace and progress. The first great age of globalization had made the world seem an infinitely smaller place. So great were the twin powers of technology (in the shape of the telephone, the telegram, the train, the car, electricity, the camera) and ideology (the gospel of free trade, guaranteed by the world's hegemonic power, Britain) that Edwardian intellectuals prophesied the end of all wars. Yet on that summer's day, one act of terrorism in Sarajevo - the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian fanatic called Gavrilo Princip - set off a sickening train of events. The world plunged into the most horrific war in history, and even after the killing had stopped, countries everywhere renounced their previous openness, fortifying their borders to limit the movement of goods, people, and even ideas.

It would be absurd to blame all the miseries of the first half of the twentieth century on a single act of terrorism: The causes of world war and protectionist folly had been germinating for years. But those causes became clear only in retrospect. John Maynard Keynes nicely describes the typical middleclass Londoner in 19 14, "sipping his morning tea in bed" while ordering goods from around the world and planning his global investments. For such a man, "the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restriction and exclusions, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements in his daily newspaper." For such a man, and millions of others, Gavrilo Princip's two shots marked a turning point.