A review I wrote for H-Diplo <networks.h-net.org/h-diplo>…

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“A connected world is falling apart” is how Harold James begins his Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises that Shaped Globalization. The industrial and agricultural depressions and revolutions of 1848, the crash of 1873, World War I, the post-WWI German hyperinflation, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Great Inflation of the 1970s, the global financial crisis and Great Recession that started in 2008, and the COVID plague. These are the subjects of Seven Crashes.

Economic shortages—especially of key food and energy resources. Famine. Disease. Social Unrest. Political upheaval. Geographic hotspots. These are the sources and expressions of Harold James’s crises. They, he believes, are “fundamental drivers that make humans more willing to reimagine how human ingenuity, and new techniques, may be used to solve problems and connect peoples across the world”. While such crises “at first sight look as if they are purely devastating, bringing death and destruction, [they] prove to be transformative”. The subject of the book is how such “transformation proceeds, and… revolutionizes thinking and reconfigures the story of globalization”.

I am very happy Harold James took the time to write this book.

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