ABSTRACT
The Great War quickly changed the international aluminium industry: on the one hand, it gave an impulse to the creation of new producers (such as the German company VAW), which broke the close club of first movers; on the other hand, firms formerly in the cartel tried to exploit wartime expansion to reach better competitive positions in the post-war period. Firms sought the help of their own governments also to cope with the post-war crisis and, for the first time, self-regulation was challenged by public policies. Actually, it is argued that the links with political powers were key factors in industrial policies for aluminium, reducing the need and the opportunity to settle a ‘private’ cartel scheme. The First World War was a kind of digression for the history of international aluminium regulation, which returned to the control of a private cartel during the 1920s, but it anticipated the future interplay between public actors and private business during and after the Second World War.
