ABSTRACT
The theme of globalization bubbles up through these pages as regularly as Old Faithful at Yellowstone Park. The traditional intellectual line dividing the domestic economy from the international economy has blurred considerably. Many of the fastest growing economies were oil and gas producers and exporters benefiting from significant increases in energy prices. The British landed gentry class of farmers had enjoyed the benefit of protectionist trade measures enacted on its behalf by Parliament. Political economist Robert Gilpin emphasizes the significance of England moving in the middle of the nineteenth century to a completely new economic policy based on the market-oriented classical economic formulations of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. The great toll of World War I was measured not only in war dead and in altered political power equations among many nations but also in economic costs—which were staggering. The United States, serving as the “arsenal for democracy,” was the only clear-cut major economic winner.
