The Depression in the 1930s was the deepest and most widespread economic collapse in history. What were its international economic and political consequences?
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER:
After the stock market crash, consumption and production of manufactured goods around the world declined. Unemployment rose drastically. American banks called in overseas loans to offset their losses. Nations deeply in debt from war loans or reparation payments could not afford early repayment, and panic spread. Nations erected protective tariffs, resulting in ruined export industries and additional reductions in world trade. Still, some nations fared better than others. France and Britain were to some extent insulated from the world economy by their overseas colonies. Those colonies, particularly India, also fared well. Nations that were heavily dependent on imported food and raw materials suffered the most from the Depression. Exported agricultural crops, such as Malayan rubber, Caribbean sugar, and Brazilian coffee, were very hard hit. Widespread economic distress had profound political consequences. For example, the United States enacted sweeping New Deal legislation, and radical politicians came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Nations devastated by declining monocrop exports consciously imitated those new dictatorships and exercised authoritarian control over their peoples and economies. Those political changes had particular significance in the decade leading toward World War II.
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