Read Online The War of the World: History's Age of Hatred by Niall Ferguson - Free Book Online
Authors: Niall Ferguson
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advantages; or he could decide to couple the security of his fortunes with the good faith of the townspeople of any substantial municipality in any continent that fancy or information might recommend.
Not only could Keynes’s inhabitant of London buy the world’s wares and invest his capital in a wide range of global securities; he could also travel the earth’s surface with unprecedented freedom and ease:
He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighbouring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference.
But the crucial point, as Keynes saw it, was that the man of 1901 ‘regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable.’ This first age of globalization was an idyll, indeed:
The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalisation of which was nearly complete in practice.
It is worth turning back to
The Times
of that golden age to verify Keynes’s justly famous recollection. Exactly a century before two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers of the World TradeCenter, ‘globalization’ was indeed a reality, even if that clumsy word was as yet unknown. On that day – which was a sunny Wednesday – Keynes’s inhabitant of London could, as he sipped his breakfast tea, have ordered a sack of coal from Cardiff, a pair of kid gloves from Paris or a box of cigars from Havana. He might also, if anticipating a visit to the grouse moors of Scotland, have purchased a ‘Breadalbane Waterproof and self-ventilating Shooting Costume (cape and kilt)’; or he might, if his interests lay in a different direction, have ordered a copy of Maurice C. Hime’s book entitled
Schoolboy’s Special Immorality
. He could have invested his money in any one of nearly fifty US companies quoted in London – most of them railroads like the Denver and Rio Grande (whose latest results were reported that day) – or, if he preferred, in one of the seven other stock markets also covered regularly by
The Times
. He might, if he felt the urge to travel, have booked himself passage on the P&O liner
Peninsular
, which was due to sail for Bombay and Karachi the next day, or on one of the twenty-three other P&O ships scheduled to sail for Eastern destinations over the next ten weeks – to say nothing of the thirty-six other shipping lines offering services from England to all the corners of the globe. Did New York seem to beckon? The
Manitou
sailed tomorrow, or he could wait for the Hamburg-America Line’s more luxurious
Fürst Bismarck
, which sailed from Southampton on the 13th. Did Buenos Aires appeal to him more? Did he perhaps wish to see for himself how the city’s Grand National Tramway Company was using – or rather, losing – his money? Very well; the
Danube
, departing for Argentina on Friday, still had some cabins free.
The world, in short, was his oyster. And yet, as Keynes understood, this oyster was not without its toxic impurities. The lead story in
The Times
that September 11 was a ‘hopeful’ report – vainly hopeful, as it turned out – that the American President William McKinley was showing signs of recovering from the attempt on his life five days earlier by the
Not only could Keynes’s inhabitant of London buy the world’s wares and invest his capital in a wide range of global securities; he could also travel the earth’s surface with unprecedented freedom and ease:
He could secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality, could despatch his servant to the neighbouring office of a bank for such supply of the precious metals as might seem convenient, and could then proceed abroad to foreign quarters, without knowledge of their religion, language, or customs, bearing coined wealth upon his person, and would consider himself greatly aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference.
But the crucial point, as Keynes saw it, was that the man of 1901 ‘regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable.’ This first age of globalization was an idyll, indeed:
The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, and appeared to exercise almost no influence at all on the ordinary course of social and economic life, the internationalisation of which was nearly complete in practice.
It is worth turning back to
The Times
of that golden age to verify Keynes’s justly famous recollection. Exactly a century before two hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers of the World TradeCenter, ‘globalization’ was indeed a reality, even if that clumsy word was as yet unknown. On that day – which was a sunny Wednesday – Keynes’s inhabitant of London could, as he sipped his breakfast tea, have ordered a sack of coal from Cardiff, a pair of kid gloves from Paris or a box of cigars from Havana. He might also, if anticipating a visit to the grouse moors of Scotland, have purchased a ‘Breadalbane Waterproof and self-ventilating Shooting Costume (cape and kilt)’; or he might, if his interests lay in a different direction, have ordered a copy of Maurice C. Hime’s book entitled
Schoolboy’s Special Immorality
. He could have invested his money in any one of nearly fifty US companies quoted in London – most of them railroads like the Denver and Rio Grande (whose latest results were reported that day) – or, if he preferred, in one of the seven other stock markets also covered regularly by
The Times
. He might, if he felt the urge to travel, have booked himself passage on the P&O liner
Peninsular
, which was due to sail for Bombay and Karachi the next day, or on one of the twenty-three other P&O ships scheduled to sail for Eastern destinations over the next ten weeks – to say nothing of the thirty-six other shipping lines offering services from England to all the corners of the globe. Did New York seem to beckon? The
Manitou
sailed tomorrow, or he could wait for the Hamburg-America Line’s more luxurious
Fürst Bismarck
, which sailed from Southampton on the 13th. Did Buenos Aires appeal to him more? Did he perhaps wish to see for himself how the city’s Grand National Tramway Company was using – or rather, losing – his money? Very well; the
Danube
, departing for Argentina on Friday, still had some cabins free.
The world, in short, was his oyster. And yet, as Keynes understood, this oyster was not without its toxic impurities. The lead story in
The Times
that September 11 was a ‘hopeful’ report – vainly hopeful, as it turned out – that the American President William McKinley was showing signs of recovering from the attempt on his life five days earlier by the
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