Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (New York: Viking Press, 2014)
Adam Tooze’s The Deluge is an important treatise concerning the development of the American-led international order during the first decade following the Great War. Throughout this book, Tooze describes and analyzes the international situation through an economic lens as he explains how the other international powers came to grips with the United States at the head of the global order. Tooze, the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and director of their European Institute, is the author of two previous works on German economic history and a contemporary look at the 2008 financial crisis. The Deluge, perhaps his most ambitious monograph, narrates the development of a new world order by retracing its formation and establishment. This new order then undergirds the entire interwar period and beyond. Nonetheless, Tooze views the post-war moment as a squandered opportunity to create a new liberal order that instead resulted in the calamity of the Second World War.
Tooze’s thesis is that the United States arrived in its position as a world hegemon after the First World War reluctantly and failed to seize on its opportunity to lead. He uses 1916 as his starting point because, in that year, American industrial might surpassed the output of the British Empire. Furthermore, while the First World War devastated continental Europe’s people and production, the United States emerged relatively unscathed. That American industrial capacity remained unmolested, he argues, was America’s real origin as a world power in the new global order. Economic potential, during World War I, became a reality.
The United States, according to Tooze, had an impulse to use its position of geographic detachment and other world powers’ dependence on it to frame a transformation in world affairs primarily through US president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s stated goal for the First World War was for it to end in “peace without victory.” This idea, expressed before US entry into the war in a January 1917 speech, epitomized American objectives for a world of global interdependence following the conflict in which no one country dominated. However, a significant negative consequence of Wilson’s postwar peace plans arose in the worldwide economic collapse a decade later. Yet another damaging consequence—the rise of fascism—was not inevitable, he argues, and the latent potential of the United States drove decision-making among world powers in going to war in the late 1930s. Fear of American dominance compelled Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and the Japanese to secure and even improve their positions on the world stage.
Despite the rise of fascism, Tooze argues that the new world order emerging after World War I was underpinned by three significant factors: moral authority, military power, and economic supremacy. The United States possessed a preponderance of power based on its economic supremacy; military power, then, was the by-product. Therefore, he characterizes the interwar period as an interval in which the United Kingdom and the United States—as foretold by the 1916 American ascension—transfer hegemony. This transfer process destabilized the international balance of power and provided an opportunity for nascent powers like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to gain a foothold in the international system. Tooze describes the United States as frustratingly ambivalent to its role, insofar as its relative safety and isolation left it unpracticed in managing world affairs. The rising Axis powers viewed themselves as insurgents fighting against this New World Order of liberalism.
Drawing on a vast array of sources, Tooze shows a keen ability to fuse generations of scholars’ work into this book. As such, this book is more of a synthesis of secondary works than an in-depth archival journey. He nonetheless makes a compelling and original argument that the United States wielded soft power and political influence rather than resort to military intervention, thus cementing America’s place as the world power. Of course, for a book of this magnitude, the author must focus on Great Power politics around the world, and by including China and Japan in his analysis, Tooze avoids the western focused biases that have accompanied similar attempts in the past. Tooze often comes off as an economic determinist, implicitly arguing that economic resources sustain all other forms of power—unsurprising from a renowned economic historian. Tooze also emphasizes the role of Woodrow Wilson in this period, highlighting his hypocrisy and inability to create the world he envisioned through his rhetoric. Tooze presents a compelling and intriguing work that is critical in understanding the consequences of the First World War and their role in precipitating the Second.
This book is targeted at a general audience yet still tackles big historiographical questions. Because of this, it is long, dense, and packed with evidence. The human element is often missing in this book in favor of systems, economics, plans, and policies. The book opens with the Great War’s last years and proceeds chronologically, finishing with the beginning of the Great Depression. Tooze’s treatment of financial underpinnings and statistics are written in as transparent a manner as one could hope. Despite its non-fiction trade publisher, this book is best suited for a scholarly, graduate-level audience. Tooze writes as though his readers are familiar with economic principles and the overarching narrative of this period. Regardless, this book is excellent for anyone interested in the economic, diplomatic, and political history of the post-World War I moment.