Economic Ramifications of No WWI?

Wolfpaw

Banned
Question's on the tin. What would the be the economic consequences if World War I was avoided?

(And yes, I do realize how open-ended this question is.)
 

Anderman

Donor
Well lot resource wouldn´t be wasted of course. With no Kriegssozialismus (wartime central planing) and maybe no russian revolution the rise of socialism is avoided. The whole climate in the societies would change.
 
Well arguably the US was in an off and on recession during the late '00s and early 10's that only ended when armaments demand spiked after 1914.

So perhaps w/o the war this cycle continues. Possibly Wilson loses in 1916.

On the other hand possibly no major slump in 1919-21.
 
No wartime central planning would greatly reduce the appeal of interventionism and top-down socialism, and would mean less government power in the combative nations.

Britain would have no daylight savings time for one. :rolleyes:

The United States remains a debter nation, without the bankrupting of all the major European powers, the global economy as a whole will be alot healthier.

London will remain the centre of global finance.

Russia will continue to draw in foriegn investment and see its GDP continue to grow at quite a pace.


Strictly speaking a political side-effect but certainly one with economic ramifications will be labour unrest. Across Europe, 1914 was just the latest in several years of growing trade union and labour unrest, from Belfast to Tsaristyn, without war this would almost certainly grow in size.

Personally I think in a world without WWI, 1916 or 1917 would have been a benchmark of radicalism, perhaps not quite 1848 but with shadows of 1968 certainly
 

Valdemar II

Banned
They would be rather big, AUstria-Hungary would continue it extreme high growth with it mix of laissez faire economical policies and large export, through it would likely be hit hard by the next recession. So AH would continue a boom and burst circle until increased democratisation brought the Social Democrats to power.

Russia would have continued a industrialisation which reminds us of East Asia almost a century later. "Hergestellt in Russland" would likely come to symbolise the same in the periode 20-50 as "made in China" do today or "made in Japan" in the 60ties, cheap consumer goods. But like Japan we will likely see Russia develop into a modern economy after a few decades of shoddy goods, and Russia would likely have overtaken USA as the world biggest economy somewhere in the 80ties.

France will continue to fall behind Germany, AH and Russia leaving it as the fourth biggest economy of Europe.

UK will likely go the way of OTL.

Germany will likely be much like OTL West Germany except double size.

Italy will end up on OTL road too, just without the fascists.

Germany and AH will likely enter some kind of EEC-like organisation, which Italy, Netherlands, Denmark and maybe Sweden and Belgium are likely to join.

The Ottoman Empire will continue survive and develop, the question are whether it can grow its economy faster than its population. I lean toward it. With the growing importance of oil, the Ottomans will likely see a oil based boom in the 50ties. But the oil are also going to be a curse, it will fuel increased Arabic separatism, because they don't want to share with Istanbul, which will push the Ottoman toward increased autocratism, but they will likely won't be worse than the Kemalists. Of course the oil will pay a increased development of Anatolia and Syria, which will strengthen the Ottoman economy.
 

Deleted member 1487

Russia would have continued a industrialisation which reminds us of East Asia almost a century later. "Hergestellt in Russland" would likely come to symbolise the same in the periode 20-50 as "made in China" do today or "made in Japan" in the 60ties, cheap consumer goods. But like Japan we will likely see Russia develop into a modern economy after a few decades of shoddy goods, and Russia would likely have overtaken USA as the world biggest economy somewhere in the 80ties.
Everything was good up until the end of this sentence. Russia won't ever overtake the US as the world's biggest economy, certainly not by the 1980's. There were far too many structural flaws for this to happen. Instead we will see something like nationalist China with massive corruption and a large uneducated population dragging things down. Cheap manufacturing will be the niche the country adopts. Later on of course things could change, but it would not be until well into the 2000s that the Russians would probably even overtake Germany ITTL.
 
The prolonged period of rapid trade volume growth without wartime and post-war interruption continues to integrate the European economies, with most of them kicking and screaming all the way.

Prospects are good for some earlier technological developments, like containerization and standardized shipping, perhaps driven by an Anglo-American first move.

The United States continues to have its ups and downs, but industrial development and sustained open door to European immigration supports a more sustainably growing economy than the war-trade sugar high.

In the event that German, Russian, and other competition for industrial products spurs support in the British Empire for Imperial Preference or a related system of Imperial protectionism of a lasting nature, there could very well be a significant degree of trade diversion and investment to light industry and primary product processing in parts of the Empire.

Most major powers will suffer serious strain in the short-term in financing the growth of their military expenditures, particularly with the need to keep up in terms of quality and technical improvements. A slowdown in growth rates of military consumption could lead to some economic dislocations in a number of supporting heavy industries, if and when it occurs.

Argentina could maintain its relative position in terms of per capita wealth, but would probably need a greater degree of investment in human capital in order to support new industry.

What will be very noticeable, and was commented on post-war by Keynes, is the growth in agricultural demand compared to the growth of agricultural output. With American, Canadian, Argentine, etc populations rapidly growing there will be serious concerns regarding British food imports--and this will be partially mirrored in the Empire generally, given the substantial population growth in South Asia.

The demand and interest will be there for an analogue of the Green Revolution, and the early antecedents of Borlaug's methods were in place. If a wealthier world develops Green Revolution methods and practices earlier, governments globally could end up much more stable as lower-class living standards would improve with lower food prices and higher quality. This could also impact attitudes toward Imperialism, as European nations would not have felt the need to support domestic agriculture without the concerns of wartime privation, and thus a great deal of agricultural development and investment could occur outside European metropole.

Even without an earlier Green Revolution though, there would be much more time for Russian land reform and Siberian settlement to sink in, and for Russian agriculture in general to approach western levels of productivity. Expanding rail networks, not just in Russia, would promote agricultural settlement and production in places otherwise not intensively farmed for lack of markets. This might apply most to interior Africa, and Brazil's grasslands.

Trying to model this out to the 1980s (let alone modern day) is too hard without something more concrete though, the range of possibilities is simply huge.
 
Africa has the real potential in this situation to possibly thrive in an earlier globalized economy.
 
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