Economic Integration and the European International System in the Era of World War I

Abstract

NOT BEING AN EXPERT ON THE ECONOMIC ASPECTS of Carl Strikwerda's interesting and provocative article, I intend to comment chiefly on how it affects our general picture of nineteenth and twentieth-century European international relations. It seems to me to have important implications in three respects. First, analysis it gives of course of European economic integration, which I take to be basically sound, clearly deals with a major element in overall picture. Second, Strikwerda offers a suggestive interpretation of actual and potential effects of this economic integration on subsequent course of twentieth-century international history. My reasons for disagreeing with this interpretation in certain respects will be main focus of these comments. Finally, his article exemplifies a general approach to international history and a conception of it that I consider valuable not only for historiography but also for public education and policy. As already indicated, I can add little to Strikwerda's main argument on extent to which West European industry, especially coal, iron, and steel, was integrated by 1914. His account, to be sure, seems to confirm rather than drastically alter prevailing picture of a European economy largely open and fairly well integrated in some major sectors. One might view debate' over whether nationalist protection or internationalist integration was dominant economic trend by 1914 as one in which either side could be right, depending on how one judged not merely factual evidence but also eventual outcome. An additional comment might be that any implied or explicit argument that further economic integration in early twentieth century might have averted a general European war would have to take more than Western Europe into account. The issues, tensions, and rivalries that actually produced war, including economic ones, lay more in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. And when Strikwerda argues that the creation of international business connections before World War I indicates relative openness of societies at time, while reaction against these ties and their failure to lead to durable