ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, Donald Sassoon deals with the first globalisation of capitalism. The process of industrialisation caused widespread anxieties, yet by 1860, it was deemed both necessary and desirable by the main political elites (liberals, conservatives and socialists). To establish the necessary consensus, it was necessary to build a national community. A number of strategies were deployed in different ways and in different countries: protectionism (to enable national capitalism to develop against foreign competition) and welfarism (to ensure that the number of possible losers would be contained). This first modern globalisation was characterised by state intervention, thus departing from what was believed ‒ not always justifiably ‒ to be the British model of free trade and a low level of state involvement.
