ABSTRACT
Transnational industrial production involves long-term investments which are risky for inves-
tors, for ‘[u]nless the continuance of production was reasonably assured, such a risk was not
bearable’ (Polanyi, 1957, p. 75; italics HP). These risks were often addressed in military-security
terms. The dangers of deflation posed by the Gold Standard, and the dependence on trade even
for the basic means of living, intensified the interdependencies and dynamics of the world
economy, within which struggles over the power and fate of national states took place. This
dynamics had the potential of escalating conflicts, assembling the conditions for the First
World War.9
