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  Copyright © 2014 by Adam Tooze

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  First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Tooze, J. Adam.

  The deluge: the Great War and the remaking of global order, 1916-1931 / Adam Tooze.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-698-17627-0

  1. World War, 1914-1918—Influence. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Social aspects. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Economic aspects. 4. World War, 1914-1918—United States. 5. Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924. 6. World politics—1919-1932. 7. Balance of power—History—20th century. 8. Economic history—1918-1945. 9. International relations—History—20th century. I. Title.

  D523.T46 2014

  940.3'1—dc23

  2014005314

  Version_1

  For Edie

  Most troublesome questions are thus handed over, sooner or later, to the historian. It is his vexation that they do not cease to be troublesome because they have been finished with by statesmen, and laid aside as practically settled . . . It is a wonder that historians who take their business seriously can sleep at night’.

  Woodrow Wilson1

  The chronicle is finished. With what feelings does one lay down Mr. Churchill’s two-thousandth page? Gratitude . . . Admiration . . . A little envy, perhaps, for his undoubting conviction that frontiers, races, patriotisms, even wars if need be, are ultimate verities for mankind, which lends for him a kind of dignity and even nobility to events, which for others are only a nightmare interlude, something to be permanently avoided.

  J. M. Keynes reviewing Winston Churchill’s book The Aftermath2

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  List of Illustrations

  List of Maps

  Maps

  List of Figures and Tables

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  The Deluge: The Remaking of World Order

  ONE

  The Eurasian Crisis

  1War in the Balance

  2Peace without Victory

  3The War Grave of Russian Democracy

  4China Joins a World at War

  5Brest-Litovsk

  6Making a Brutal Peace

  7The World Come Apart

  8Intervention

  TWO

  Winning a Democratic Victory

  9Energizing the Entente

  10The Arsenals of Democracy

  11Armistice: Setting the Wilsonian Script

  12Democracy Under Pressure

  THREE

  The Unfinished Peace

  13A Patchwork World Order

  14‘The Truth About the Treaty’

  15Reparations

  16Compliance in Europe

  17Compliance in Asia

  18The Fiasco of Wilsonianism

  FOUR

  The Search for a New Order

  19The Great Deflation

  20Crisis of Empire

  21A Conference in Washington

  22Reinventing Communism

  23Genoa: The Failure of British Hegemony

  24Europe on the Brink

  25The New Politics of War and Peace

  26The Great Depression

  Conclusion

  Raising the Stakes

  Photographs

  Notes

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  1.Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson, 1915.

  2.Aftermath of Easter Rising, Dublin, June 1916.

  3.German troops marching into Bucharest, December 1916.

  4.Yuan Shi-Kai, 1916.

  5.Men and women queuing to vote for the Russian Constituent Assembly, November 1917.

  6.The Tauride Palace, meeting place of the Constituent Assembly, January 1918.

  7.American and French troops with Renault FT light tanks, 1918.

  8.A blindfolded Russian negotiator with Habsburg troops en route to Brest-Litovsk.

  9.Prince Leopold of Bavaria signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, March 1918.

  10.German troops in Kiev, August 1918.

  11.Poster for the eighth German war loan, March 1918.

  12.Poster for the Third US Liberty Loan, April 1918.

  13.Kiel marines on the Friedrichstrasse, 7 November 1918.

  14.The SMS Hindenburg sailing into Scapa Flow to surrender, 21 November 1918.

  15.Woodrow Wilson welcomed on arrival at Dover, 26 December 1918.

  16.Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George in Versailles.

  17.‘Red Scare’ cartoon by William Allen Rogers.

  18.Japanese Red Cross nurses returning from the Siberian intervention, 1919

  19.Matthias Erzberger and advisors discussing future of Danzig, March 1919.

  20.Patriotic, anti-Japanese protestors in Shanghai, spring 1919.

  21.Unemployment rally, London, January 1921.

  22.An old woman being escorted to vote in the Upper Silesia plebiscite, March 1921.

  23.Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

  24.The Washington Naval Conference, November 1921.

  25.Gandhi Day, Delhi, July 1922.

  26.French troops guarding the entrance hall to the Coal Syndicate, the Ruhr, January 1923.

  27.Lenin’s funeral, Moscow, January 1924.

  28.Ku Klux Klan parade, Washington DC, 1926.

  29.Japan’s Foreign Minister Kijuro Shidehara.

  30.General Chiang Kai Shek being greeted by crowds in Hankow, 1927

  31.Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann, September 1926.

  32.Crowds gathering outside the London Stock Exchange after the Gold Standard had been suspended, 21 September 1931.

  All images copyright © Getty Images.

  List of Maps

  1.The dismemberment of China

  2.European territorial changes resulting from the First World War

  List of Figures and Tables

  Figure 1. The GDP of Empires (source: A. Maddison, Historical Statistics of the World Economy, http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm)

  Figure 2. The Forgotten Recession: America’s Post-War Shock, 1919–21 (source: NBER Macrohistory database, http://www.nber.org/databases/microhistory)

  Figure 3. The Great Deflation (source: J. S. Davis, ‘Recent Developments in World Finance’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 4, no. 2 (April 1922), 62–87)


  Figure 4. The ‘Urshock’ of the British Interwar: The First Spike in UK Unemployment, 1920–21 (source: NBER Macrohistory database, http://www.nber.org/databases/macrohistory)

  Table 1. What the Dollars Bought: The Share of Vital War Materials Purchased by the UK Abroad, 1914–18 (sources: K. D. Stubbs, Race to the Front: The Material Foundations of Coalition Strategy in the Great War (Westport, CT, 2002), 300–301, 305–8, 313; M. W. Gibson, British Strategy and Oil, 1914–1923 (PhD, University of Glasgow, 2012), 73, 96)

  Table 2. The Biggest Event in Democratic History: The Outcome of the Russian Constituent Assembly Election, November 1917 (source: O. H. Radkey, The Election to the Russian Constituent Assembly of 1917 (Cambridge, MA, 1950), 16–17)

  Table 3. From Deficit to Surplus to Deficit: Japan’s Fragile Balance of Payments, 1913–29 (source: H. G. Moulton, Japan: An Economic and Financial Appraisal (Washington, DC, 1931), 486–527

  Table 4. The Wartime Dislocation of the Global Price System: Wholesale Prices (sources: C. Wrigley (ed.), The First World War and the International Economy (Cheltenham, UK, 2000), 18; M. A. Rifaat, The Monetary System of Egypt (London, 1935), 197)

  Table 5. A Low-Growth War Economy: The United States, 1916–20 (source: C. Gilbert, American Financing of World War I (Westport, CT, 1970), 68, 202, 215)

  Table 6. War, Inflation and Labour Militancy, 1914–21: The Number of Strikes (sources: C. Wrigley (ed.), The First World War and the International Economy (Cheltenham, UK, 2000), 206; Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC, 1961), D764, 99)

  Table 7. The New Hierarchy of Financial Power: An American Assessment of Budget Positions Ahead of Versailles, December 1918 (source: P. D. Cravath memo for D. H. Miller, ‘Preliminary Suggestions Regarding Indemnities’, December 1918, Document 62, in P. M. Burnett, Reparation at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1940), vol. 1, 457)

  Table 8. The Heavy Hand of the ‘Associate’: Allied Indebtedness to the United States (source: adapted from R. Self, Britain, America and the War Debt Controversy: The Economic Diplomacy of an Unspecial Relationship, 1917–1941 (London, 2006), 217)

  Table 9. What Germany Paid, 1918–31 (sources (reparations): S. B. Webb, Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Weimar Germany (Oxford, 1989), 37, S. A. Schuker, American ‘Reparations’ to Germany, 1919–1933 (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 25, 44–5, 107–08, and C. Bresciani-Turroni, The Economics of Inflation (London, 1937), 93; sources (national income): A. Ritschl and M. Spoerer, ‘Das Bruttosozialprodukt in Deutschland nach den amtlichen Volkseinkommens und Sozialproduktstatistiken 1901–1995’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2 (1997), 11–37, spliced with C.-L. Holtfrerich, Die deutsche Inflation 1914–1923 (Berlin, 1980), 221)

  Table 10. Stretched Thin: Deployment of British Imperial Forces, February 1920 (source: A. Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919–39 (London, 1986), 45)

  Table 11. Germany’s Slide into Hyperinflation, 1919–23 (sources: S. B. Webb, Hyperinflation and Stabilization in Weimar Germany (Oxford, 1989), 37, 49; NBER Macrohistory database, http://www.nber.org/databases/macrohistory/contents/; C.-L. Holtfrerich, Die deutsche Inflation, 1914–1923 (Berlin, 1980))

  Table 12. Coming to Terms with Washington: War Debt Agreements, 1923–30 (source: adapted from R. Self, Britain, America and the War Debt Controversy: The Economic Diplomacy of an Unspecial Relationship, 1917–1941 (London, 2006), 218)

  Table 13. Doux Commerce: US Private Long-Term Foreign Investment, December 1930 (source: Royal Institute of International Affairs, The Problem of International Investment (Oxford, 1937), 186–7)

  Table 14. The Effects of the Hoover Moratorium on ‘Political Debts’, June 1931 (source: The Economist, 11 June 1932)

  Table 15. The Rising Cost of Confrontation: Military Spending before World War I Compared to the 1930s (sources (defence burden): Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington DC, 1960); J. Eloranta, ‘From the Great Illusion to the Great War: Military Spending Behaviour of the Great Powers, 1870–1913’, European Review of Economic History 11 (2007), 255–83; J. Eloranta, ‘Why Did the league of Nations Fail?’, Cliometrica (2011), 27–52; source (GDP): A. Maddison, Historical Statistics of the World Economy, http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm)

  Acknowledgements

  This book was born in the wake of my last project with Simon Winder and Clare Alexander. I am grateful to them both as well as to Wendy Wolf for setting me on my way. My new agents in the US, Andrew Wylie and Sarah Chalfant, saw the project to its conclusion. Knowing that 2014 was bound to be a crowded anniversary year, The Deluge was shepherded to prompt publication thanks to the combined efforts of Simon, Marina Kemp, my copy-editor Richard Mason, the indexer Dave Cradduck and the production team at Penguin headed by Richard Duguid. I am deeply grateful for their friendly professionalism and commitment to the project.

  Writing books is not easy, but some books are harder to write than others. This was not an easy book. Those who have friends and colleagues to help them must count themselves lucky, and I am truly so. In England I was fortunate to have Bernhard Fulda, Melissa Lane, Chris Clark, David Reynolds and David Edgerton as conversational companions and readers of the manuscript. After moving to Yale in 2009, I discovered a good fortune that was even greater. Beyond strong individual friendships I found intellectual community.

  Community is woven of many threads. Above all I have been sustained by a brilliant group of graduate students and soon-to-be colleagues who have inspired and energized me in ways I have never before experienced. Grey Anderson, Aner Barzilay, Kate Brackney, Carmen Dege, Stefan Eich, Ted Fertik and Jeremy Kessler have constituted a shifting and constantly renewing conversation extended over the years since 2009. The momentum and sleepless energy that we have generated in this group has been extraordinary. It has been a true joy and privilege to share this experience. Long may it continue.

  Yale is a varied intellectual ecotope and my second circle is made up of friends and colleagues in international history and at International Security Studies, the outfit that I inherited in 2013 from the great Paul Kennedy. Directors need associate directors. Amanda Behm’s exemplary work as my Associate Director at ISS was crucial to allowing me to finish this book in 2013. Not that ISS is a two-person show. Among the wider cast of characters tied to international history at Yale, my colleague Patrick Cohrs and Amanda’s predecessor as Associate Director, Ryan Irwin, stand out as particularly important in influencing this book.

  Finally, I want to thank my colleagues in History, in Political Science, German Studies and the Law School who have taken time to discuss or comment on chapters, or who have shared moments of inspiration, illumination or encouragement. Laura Engelstein made me feel at home at Yale and reassured me about my grasp of Russian history. Tim Snyder, Paul Kennedy and Jay Winter contributed to a memorable debate about an early position paper. Julia Adams hosted a fascinating conversation at the Transitions seminar. Karuna Mantena provided a sounding board for the issues of India and liberalism. Scott Shapiro and Oona Hathaway’s enthusiasm for international law and the peaceful order of Kellogg-Briand is infectious. John Witt provided a model of scholarly companionship over many early mornings at Blue State Café. Conversations with Bruce Ackerman helped me to solidify my reading of the Wilsonian moment. Paul North pushed me to justify a reformist position in modern politics. Seyla Benhabib articulated a defence of such a position more brilliant than I could possibly offer. Ian Shapiro’s delightful enthusiasm for my last book encouraged me enormously.

  On top of all this, successive cohorts of undergraduate students at Yale to whom I taught aspects of interwar international history have offered valuable suggestions and input. I think in particular of Ben Alter, Connor Crawford, Benjamin Daus-Haberle, Eddie Fishman and Teo Soares. They all left their mark on this text, in some cases literally. Ben and Teo both provided valuable editorial assistance, as did Ned
Downie, Isabel Marin and Igor Biyurkov, my trusty assistant at ISS.

  Away from home base in Cambridge and Yale, the first paper I gave on this project was to Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s legendary seminar at Bielefeld University. It was a privilege to appear in that forum. Early on, I received extremely useful comments from the American History seminar in Cambridge. The last paper I gave in Britain was at James Thompson’s invitation to the History seminar at Bristol University. Peter Hayes and Deborah Cohen offered me a podium at Northwestern University, Geoff Eley at a fascism workshop at Notre Dame. Charlie Bright and Michael Geyer shared in the excitement of a workshop at Yale. Dominique Reill and Hermann Beck fuelled a fascinating discussion at the University of Miami. At the Great Depression Conference at Princeton in early 2013, Barry Eichengreen reacted with exemplary grace to my critique of Golden Fetters. Nothing could have been more encouraging. At the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Steinberg, Dan Raff and Michael Bordo all helped me to firm up my take on American hegemony in the interwar period. Jonathan’s enthusiastic commentary on my work has accompanied me throughout my career for almost 20 years. His friendship and that of Marion Kant has been a great gift. Harold James and other contributors to a National Intelligence Council Analytic Exchange in Washington DC in January 2013 offered an entrée to a new world of American policy debate. At a workshop on Techno-Politics in the Age of the Great War 1900–30, hosted by the IFK centre for advanced studies in Vienna, I was particularly fortunate to get feedback from Hew Strachan, Jay Winter and once more from Michael Geyer. Special thanks to Jari Eloranta for last-minute assistance with data.

  Twenty-two years ago in the PhD programme at the LSE I met Francesca Carnevali. In all the years that followed we read each other’s work. We were the most intimate of friends. Francesca was, of course, among the first to read drafts of this book. She and Paolo Di Matino, her incomparable husband, whom I am honoured to count as a friend and colleague, shared with me their extraordinary energy, hospitality and love whenever I could visit Birmingham. The fact that Francesca is gone leaves a gaping hole in our world.