Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

"A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

The post-1945 international free-trade regime was established to foster a more integrated, prosperous, and peaceful world.

As US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1933-1944), "Father of the United Nations" and one of the regime's principal architects, explained in his memoirs, "unhampered trade dovetailed with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers, and unfair economic competition, with war." Remarkably, this same economic order is now under assault from the country most involved in its creation: the United States.

A global economic nationalist resurgence - heralded by Donald Trump's "America First" protectionism and resultant trade wars with the USA's closest allies and trading partners - now looks to transform over seventy years of regional and glob