The Imperial Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1936 and lasted until about 1940. It was the most severe depression ever experienced by the industrialized world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions, macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the German Empire, the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in almost every most countries of the world, with only the Syndicalist revolutionary governments of the Third International being largely spared. Its social and cultural effects were no less staggering, especially in the Germany, where the Imperial Depression represented the harshest peacetime adversity faced by Germans since the formation of the Empire in 1871.
Economic history
The timing and severity of the Imperial Depression varied substantially across countries. The Depression was particularly long and severe in Central Europe and especially the United States, which was still recovering from an unrelated economic depression that started in 1925; it was milder in Japan and much of the British Commonwealth. Perhaps not surprisingly, the worst depression ever experienced by the world economy stemmed from a multitude of causes. Global instability outbreaks of political violence in eastern Europe, subsequent reductions in international trade and investment, and misguided government policies caused economic output to fall in the German Empire, while the gold standard, which linked nearly all the countries of the world in a network of fixed currency exchange rates, played a key role in transmitting the German downturn to other countries. The recovery from the Great Depression was initially spurred by the revaluation of the Reichsmark against gold and the ensuing monetary expansion, and ultimately completed due to mobilization and increased military spending following the outbreak of the Second Weltkrieg. The economic impact of the Imperial Depression was enormous, including both extreme human suffering and profound changes in economic policy.
Timing and severity
The Imperial Depression began in the German Empire as a marked slowing of economic growth in the fall of 1935. The downturn became markedly worse, however, in early 1936 and continued until late 1938. Real output and prices fell precipitously. Between the peak and the trough of the downturn, industrial production in the German Empire declined 54 percent and real gross
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While the article about him, as usual, calls him a terrible dictator, it also contains this paragraph:
Albania’s economy was revolutionized under Hoxha’s long rule. Farmland was confiscated from wealthy landowners and gathered into collective farms that eventually enabled Albania to become almost completely self-sufficient in food crops. Industry, which had previously been almost nonexistent, received huge amounts of investment, so that by the 1980s it had grown to contribute more than half of the gross national product. Electricity was brought to every rural district, epidemics of disease were stamped out, and illiteracy became a thing of the past.
A while back, I had a history professor who said there was a noticeable difference in tone between the two sets, as a testament to the cultural impact of the Great War. Broadly speaking, he claims the 1911 edition was decidedly optimistic in that 19th century British way, and more specifically that it had a more historicist and human approach to warfare. By contrast, the 1922 supplement is allegedly more mechanistic and Modern, with a more technocratic approach to knowledge and technological view of history.
Is this the consensus opinion of literary historians/scholars, or a personal interpretation by my professor? Is this specific subject one that's been studied in serious depth by literary historians, or do they tend to focus more on Literature literature?
