The New Deal: A Global History

by Kiran Klaus Patel

Overview

The first history of the new deal in global context

The New Deal: A Global History provides a radically new interpretation of a pivotal period in US history. The first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context, the book compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe—not just in Europe but also in Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. Work creation, agricultural intervention, state planning, immigration policy, the role of mass media, forms of political leadership, and new ways of ruling America's colonies—all had parallels elsewhere and unfolded against a backdrop of intense global debates.

By avoiding the distortions of American exceptionalism, Kiran Klaus Patel shows how America's reaction to the Great Depression connected it to the wider world. Among much else, the book explains why the New Deal had enormous repercussions on China; why Franklin D. Roosevelt studied the welfare schemes of Nazi Germany; and why the New Dealers were fascinated by cooperatives in Sweden—but ignored similar schemes in Japan.

Ultimately, Patel argues, the New Deal provided the institutional scaffolding for the construction of American global hegemony in the postwar era, making this history essential for understanding both the New Deal and America's rise to global leadership.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691149127
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	01/12/2016
Series:	America in the World , #21
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Kiran Klaus Patel is the Jean Monnet Professor of European and Global History at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. His books include Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933–1945, and he has edited a number of volumes, including The United States and Germany during the Twentieth Century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Abbreviations xi

Prologue 1

Chapter 1

A Global Crisis 10

A Fragile Boom 10

The Crisis and Its Origins 24

Chapter 2

In Search of New Beginnings 45

Setting Stages 45

Many New Deals 56

Planning and Mobilization 90

Chapter 3

Into the Vast External Realm 121

Gold, Silver, and Other Bombs 121

Good Neighbors 139

Borders, Hard and Soft 171

Chapter 4

Redefining Boundaries 190

Deeper into the Alphabet Soup 190

Broadening Security 218

Roads Traveled, Built, and Untraveled 242

Chapter 5

The American World Order 261

The New Deal State at War 261

A Global Legacy 278

Notes 301

Bibliography 351

Index 415

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The first book to globalize the history of the New Deal, this is an amazing tour de force with fresh insights on virtually every page. Many historians will wish they had written it."—Akira Iriye, Harvard University

"This indispensable book reveals the national, comparative, and global dimensions of the Great Depression and New Deal. Attentive to the global circuitry of policy options and supported by a vast knowledge of other national responses, Kiran Klaus Patel transforms our understanding of the formation and nationalist shape of the New Deal. One cannot claim to understand the New Deal without reading this book."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History

"Kiran Klaus Patel boldly advances the effort to transnationalize historians' understanding of the New Deal, convincingly demonstrating the need to understand the United States in the 1930s as embedded in a larger world confronting a shared crisis. This formidable book decisively challenges exceptionalist claims about mid-twentieth-century reform in the United States."—Paul A. Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines

"A stunning world tour, full of surprises and insights into government action in the 1930s in many nations and across a vast policy terrain. This is comparative and transnational history at its best."—Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present

"The New Deal is usually thought of as a quintessentially American historical moment. But as Kiran Klaus Patel's penetrating book shows, it was also a deeply international event, both in terms of Americans transmitting their ideas abroad as well as importing innovations from often-unexpected places around the world. Insightful and original, The New Deal: A Global History will challenge preconceptions and change the way we perceive a seminal moment in world history."—Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge

"Kiran Klaus Patel provides a strikingly broad and comprehensive treatment of the New Deal and brings a remarkable range of global knowledge to bear on the subject. An extraordinary mine of information, this unique and valuable book will be an indispensable reference point in future debates over the global 1930s."—Daniel T. Rodgers, professor emeritus, Princeton University

"An astute, powerfully synthetic global history of the New Deal, this book covers a vast terrain, substantively and geographically, blending a discerning reading of the enormous literature on the New Deal with judiciously targeted primary research. The result is a fresh perspective on the global dimensions of innovation within the American state—and a book for which there is an overwhelming need."—James Sparrow, University of Chicago

Editorial Reviews

Co-Winner of the 2017 World History Association Jerry Bentley Book Prize

"Patel's story will become the definitive account. . . . An impressive, thought-provoking narrative of the New Deal. . . . Patel raised important questions for historians to consider as they continue to grapple with this period of American history and as they, more generally, attempt to argue when and how the global matters."—-Meg Jacobs, American Historical Review

"Impressive. . . . Patel traces with unprecedented detail the intense international exchange and ‘transnational learning and linking' that shaped the Roosevelt administration's responses to the global crisis of capitalism and democracy in the 1930s."—-Ira Katznelson, Foreign Affairs

"Skillfully combining an original approach, comprehensive information and surprising anecdotes, Patel's book contributes to the critical reassessment of a key moment in recent US history."—-Giovanni Bernardini, Corriere della Sera

"A compelling argument that is profoundly relevant to the twenty-first century."—-Glenn C. Altschuler, Huffington Post

"Those in search of an up-to-date New Deal primer that pays special attention to international connections will find Patel's results extremely useful. The book’s fantastic bibliography alone, covering works in no fewer than seven languages, is worth the price of the volume."—-Brooke L. Blower, Journal of American History

From the Publisher

"In pursuing this transnational approach, Patel is clearly broadening our perspective in much the same way as did a generation of scholars before him who also avoided a national perspective but - turning toward another direction - chose a more local or regional focus instead. . . . This global history of the New Deal succeeds in its attempt to re-frame U.S. history of the 1930s and after in a transnational setting."

Hsozkult

"Patel presents exhaustive and valuable factual comparisons of the New Deal with various other country policies in the 1930s."

Choice

11/15/2015
It's almost a given to say that rather than the New Deal, it took World War II to end the Great Depression. Yet beyond that notion, the New Deal has lacked a comprehensive comparison to similar programs in other nations. Historian Patel (European & Global History, Maastricht Univ., Netherlands; Soldiers of Labor) attempts to fill this vacuum in this first major cross-national study of the New Deal, and its contemporary legacy. The author's approach undermines simplistic binaries of isolationism/internationalism, national/state, and public/private in describing the origins and implementation of the New Deal, which changed over time. However, history is too complex for simplicities, even when discussing projects such as the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Tennessee Valley Authority. Patel could have placed more emphasis on the ad-hoc nature of the New Deal and its vast successful in restoring hope to Americans during the Great Depression. It's also a given to say that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a pragmatist who was willing to try anything that worked and wanted thriving aspects of the New Deal made permanent. VERDICT Considering the massive comparative nature of this undertaking, Patel deserves credit for completing it within 300 pages, apart from the endnotes. This balanced treatment with intriguing insights is hardly a page-turner; instead, it's aimed at scholars interested in setting the New Deal within a domestic and international context.—William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

Library Journal

2015-10-04
A deep, scholarly dive into the New Deal and how it relates to the world's attempts to deal with what he calls the "Great Slump." The Depression was not entirely caused by the stock market crash. In great, sometimes overwhelming detail, Patel (European and Global History/Maastricht Univ.; Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933 to 1945, 2005, etc.) shows how the destabilizing effects of World War I caused the collapse of states and empires and how the reparations required by the Treaty of Versailles left an insurmountable burden on Germany. Franklin Roosevelt proposed an easing of those payments to European countries but did not offer to ease the debt they owed to the United States, which they couldn't pay without the reparations. As such, nearly everyone defaulted. Europe and the world were slipping, economic chaos spurred coups, and dictatorships were replacing democracies. The author notes that democracy was considered boring, while fascism and communism were considered more innovative. It was time for the U.S. to take the global economic and political lead, but the nation wasn't yet ready. Instead, it turned inward, cut lending, raised tariffs, and fixed prices. The New Deal was not only an alphabet soup of institutions, it was an amalgam of ideas culled from all over the world, in places where pensions and unemployment insurance were already established. At the time, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were admired for their successes in creating labor services, education, and housing. Many New Deal plans had distinct similarities to their programs, which unfortunately included racism, expansionism, and control of their inhabitants. The author shows how all nations turned to nationalism, social engineering of planned communities, intervention, and insulation to seek security and recovery. This book provides much to study and reread. Though mostly well-written, the narrative is factually dense, intense, and often verbose. It should be useful to economists, researchers, and specialists in the Depression and its aftermath.

Kirkus Reviews