Achieving “living space” for the German people was one of Hitler’s central aims. The concept was developed in the late nineteenth century and popularized in the 1920s after Germany lost territory at the end of the First World War. Hitler saw the concept as essential for the survival of the German people. The object was not just space, but imperial space that could be exploited for resources and whose population would serve German needs. This “greater economic area” was to be self-sufficient (autarkic) as far as possible, creating a German-centered economic bloc to reflect what some German economists assumed was the way the world economy was developing. The war against the Soviet Union was intended to complete this program of imperial expansion and provide room for the surplus German population as well as generous supplies of food and raw materials.

This chapter explains why and how the Nazi regime created a mixed economy in which property remained private but profits were largely controlled by government policy. As Germany became a monopsony, an economy dominated by a single buyer, in this case the German state, large firms adapted their business to serving the state’s desires and demands, thus becoming agents and servants of them.

Recent years have witnessed other significant changes. For example, cash is used less and less while good manners seem to have increasingly characterized past behavior. Spending of individuals and families seem to come more and more in fixed amounts. The law of demand seems to play less of a role, while the overall budget has become more important. This means that tightening the belt can play less of a role when economic conditions worsen during recessions and inflations. The value of economic exchange now depends much more on the information contained in the exchange than on the value of the labor and material of what is exchanged. This may have implications for the welfare as distinguished from the economic value of the exchange. More recently the scarcity of rare materials and of difficult to produce inputs (such as micro transistors) may have become more important.

This chapter outlines the secular convergence of Italy’s GDP. From the mid-1890s to 1913, the centuries-long economic decline was reversed. Institution-building and time-consistent policies of monetary stability and reduction of the debt-GDP ratio were among the main causes. The convergence record of the fascist years is mixed. As growth-reducing factors, we highlight “prestige policies” leading to an overvalued currency, and autarky. Postwar reconstruction was swift, followed by a quarter-century catch-up growth and cultural renaissance. The 1970s were turbulent years, marked by terrorism and inflation. Growth however continued to show unexpected resilience. Seeds of future weaknesses were nonetheless sown. Social tensions were eased by deficit-financed benefits. In the 1980s growth continued but the ratio of debt to GDP rose from 50 to almost 100 percent.

This chapter explores how the strategic value of bird islands increased in the interwar period, even as their economic value dwindled. The Marcus Island Incident helped spark Japanese interest in offshore guano mining for use as phosphate fertilizer, and Japanese-managed mining operations began to pop up on islands throughout the East and South China seas. They were only intermittently profitable, and were abandoned during economic downturns. But they triggered diplomatic disputes first with China (over the Pratas and Paracel groups) and then with France (over the Spratlys). Over time military planners began to conceive of the islands as potential airstrips or submarine refuelling stations. Japanese companies, often competing with each other for rights to the islands, exploited these visions by portraying themselves as useful adjuncts in the defence of Japan’s ‘maritime lifeline’. By the late 1930s the Japanese Navy was directly bankrolling civilian enterprises as cover for military operations.

This chapter shifts the focus to Europe in the early nineteenth century, where three important archetypes of economic nationalism were conceived. The first two were isolationist. Protectionists in France promoted disengagement from the world economy to forestall a rise in economic inequality which they feared might undermine national unity. Romanticist philosophers such as Adam Müller and Johann Gottlieb Fichte in Germany saw intensifying trade as eroding ‘traditional’ national and cultural values, which led them to advocate strict autarky. Friedrich List drew on these ideas, but also on developmental American approaches, in particular Alexander Hamilton’s ideas. He crafted an intellectual synthesis that sought to spur industrialisation by managing trade. However, List was unable to solve the tension between an ideology defending the economic sovereignty of small nations and one advocating imperialist expansion in search for markets, land and resources.

This chapter examines the reasons for the rupture of the Britanno-Merina alliance and, in the context of the adoption of autarkic policies, assesses the Merina court’s attempts to industrialize, and the role of the Madagascar Youths in such efforts. Following the 1820 Britanno-Merina treaty, the main aims of the Merina crown were to utilize the British alliance to create an island empire and to promote economic modernization through importing European skills and technology and exploiting the island’s human and natural resources. Thus, Radama sent a number of Madagascar Youths abroad to Britain and Mauritius to study British crafts and industrial techniques. He also encouraged an influx of ‘British’ military, agricultural, and craft specialists, chiefly British missionary and Mauritian Creole artisans to whom he assigned Malagasy apprentices. He intended that the apprentices, both those sent abroad and those trained locally, would quickly replace European personnel. This imperative increased from 1826, when Radama rejected the 1820 Britanno-Merina treaty and adopted autarkic economic policies, a decision endorsed from 1828 by his senior wife and successor, Ranavalona. This change of policy had profound implications for relations with the British, for foreign artisans in Madagascar, and, upon their return, the Madagascar Youths.

In academic writing from Green perspectives, work on the economy is perhaps the most well developed. This is understandable given that the economy constitutes the metabolism between human society and the wider ecosystem of which it is a part in terms of materials, resources, energy and waste. This chapter explores the critiques that Greens provide of the contemporary economy before considering alternative visions of a Green economy, as well as thinking about how to get from one to the other. Hence, I first outline Green critiques of today’s global economy, in particular its ecological unsustainability and commitment to infinite growth on a finite planet. We then look at what a Green economy might look like and how this departs markedly from ideas which invoke the same label propagated by institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank. Finally, we explore the range of strategies Greens employ and propose to build a green economy.

Chapter 5 analyses how, in the context of the international isolation of Francoist Spain in the early 1940s, autarchic discourses and projects for economic and industrial self-sufficiency gained prominence and guided the new policies. Raw materials, the way they were geographically distributed and the economics of their exploitation became state decisions to which chemists contributed in reframing academic disciplines and industrial endeavours. This chapter also stresses the distinction between autarky (referring to economic self-sufficiency) and autarchy (referring to autocratic political rule). Under the influence of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, chemicals became important agents for the materialisation of the early Francoism. Industrial chemistry training evolved from the traditional technical chemistry books and subjects to a more ‘modern’ approach to chemical engineering. Finally, chemical diplomacy and chemists’ active role as ‘ambassadors’ of the regime provide additional reasons to revisit autarky/autarchy, as well as pointing out some lines of continuity with the scientific culture of the pre-Civil War period.

There are many indications that this world order is undergoing a fundamental transformation both in terms of who are the influential players and in terms of what governance norms and structure they seek to pursue. By way of conclusion, this chapter first summarizes these transformations and offers a mapping of their current repercussions in international economic relations. This chapter then argues that overcoming the current disintegration of international economic relations would require a pluralist world order. Lastly, it outlines the normative parameters of what such an order could comprise.