Changing visions of the world sugar market in the Great Depression1

Abstract

The interwar period is usually characterised as a prime example of disintegration and national antagonism, and even claimed by some to be the ‘end of globalisation’. This article shows, however, that first attempts towards an economic internationalism were possible and implemented. It argues that a changing vision of the world provided the basis for this new tendency. The irreversibility of the interconnectedness of the national economies became obvious in spite of an end of globalisation as mirrored by the decline in international trade. This shift in the vision of the economic world is described for the case of the international sugar market. Driven by the Great Depression, the sugar industries of the main European sugar exporting countries concluded a private ‘gentlemen's agreement’ with the main producers of sugar cane, Cuba and Java. This innovative measure of international market regulation together with the change in the vision of the world sugar market laid the foundation for the international negotiations of sugar politics after the Second World War.