The New Deal: A Global History

by Kiran Klaus Patel

The New Deal: A Global History provides a radically new interpretation of a pivotal period in U.S. history. The first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context, the book compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe--not just in Europe but also in Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. Work creation, agricultural intervention, state planning, immigration policy, the role of mass media, forms of political leadership, and new ways of ruling America's colonies--all had parallels elsewhere and unfolded against a backdrop of intense global debates.

By avoiding the distortions of American exceptionalism, Kiran Klaus Patel shows how America's reaction to the Great Depression connected it to the wider world. Among much else, the book explains why the New Deal had enormous repercussions on China; why Franklin D. Roosevelt studied the welfare schemes of Nazi Germany; and why the New Dealers were fascinated by cooperatives in Sweden--but ignored similar schemes in Japan.

Ultimately, Patel argues, the New Deal provided the institutional scaffolding for the construction of American global hegemony in the postwar era, making this history essential for understanding both the New Deal and America's rise to global leadership.

Genres: History, American History

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2016

Reviews

[Ryan Houlette · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting and valuable perspective, but badly marred by repetitive and unclear writing.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have loved to read this as an article. The core concept about how the New Deal was part of a larger international current of reform during the great depression, and often took direct inspiration from other countries' programs, is interesting but a lot of the book is walking through different New Deal programs and then listing out other countries' policies in that field and explaining how they were the same or different. It's very listy in a way that often doesn't add much to the central argument. The idea of Insulationism as a foreign policy\economic approach in the 1930s seems useful and I wish that this idea had been centered more after the first chapter.

[Emily Rheault]

It does a lot and does it well.