ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Monday 1 March 2021

BOOK: Maartje ABBENHUIS & Gordon MORRELL, The First Age of Industrial Globalization. An international History 1815-1918 [New Approaches to International History] (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 264 p. ISBN 9781474267090

 

(image source: Bloomsbury)

Abstract:
This book offers an accessible and lively survey of the global history of the age of industrialization and globalization that arose in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and collapsed in the maelstrom of the First World War. Through a combination of industrialization, technological innovation and imperial expansion, the industrializing powers of the world helped to create inter-connected global space that left few regions untouched. In ten concise chapters, this book relays the major shifts in global power, economics and society, outlining the interconnections of global industrial, imperial and economic change for local and regional experiences, identities and politics. It finishes with an exposé on the catastrophic impact of the First World War on this global system. The First Age of Industrial Globalization weaves together the histories of industrialization, world economy, imperialism, international law, diplomacy and war, which historians usually treat as separate developments, and integrates them to offer a new analysis of an era of fundamental historical change. It shows that the revolutionary changes in politics, society and international affairs experienced in the 19th century were inter-connected developments. It is essential reading for any student of modern global history.

Table of contents:

List of illustrations and tables
Acknowledgements
A note on sources
Chapter 1: Contours of the first age of industrial globalization, 1815-1918
Chapter 2: Of concerts and restraints: the international diplomatic system, 1815-1856
Chapter 3: Industrializing empires and global capitalism after 1815
Chapter 4: Building globalization's infrastructure after 1856
Chapter 5: Migration and the spread of formal and informal empires
Chapter 6: Global commodities and the environmental costs of industrial capitalism
Chapter 7: A world of war after 1856
Chapter 8: Where local meets global: ideas and politics on a global scale
Chapter 9: Industrial globalization and the origins of the First World War
Chapter 10: Industrial globalization at total war, 1914-1918
Index

(source: Bloomsbury)