ABSTRACT
This chapter presents two related theme characteristic of the twentieth century The Great Detour. Prior to World War I, Britain, in the form of its empire, creates a proto global economy and the gold standard in link with sterling operated as a proto world currency. Old imperialisms were to live on and above all the twentieth century was as if destined to live itself out under the image of a divided world. First that between the east and the west, capitalism and communism; then between Islam and the west. Events were outgrowing traditional theories. Processes were in train, which did not fit the nineteenth century laissez-faire scheme of things. The Bolshevik Revolution, loaves of bread costing wheelbarrows full of money these things were not contemplated by classical economists. The world's financial system, and with it the global financial crisis, is also linked to this history of a divided world and to foreign policies masquerading as economics.
