Deviated from my previous schedule, as too much more on France etc. wouldn't have made sense without a glance at the Empire.
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Post-war Imperial abundance. The tacit trade between economic prosperity and political liberty had always under-girded authoritarian democratic systems.
In the early 1930s, the early Bright Young Things lacked a comprehensive economic vision but understood that the tumbledown economies of the post-Revolution Dominions were unfit for their grand ambitions. The Revolution left a fragmented capitalist economic system, with the industries of Canada, Australasia and the rest oriented toward exports and resource extraction for the lost British homeland, and little domestic productive capacity. The Exiles escaped Britain with great advantages in technical expertise and liquid capital, aided by the Syndicalists’ initial open exit policy for counterrevolutionaries. Stunned by the scale of their victory and the royalist withdrawal, the early Syndicalist leadership failed to appreciate their enemies were absconding with valuable assets, not only physical and financial, but also intellectual. Unlike the bohemian intelligentsia, many of the UK’s practical scientists (engineers, statisticians, architects and the like) opposed the Revolution and chose to flee before the Syndicalists belatedly slammed the door. These were important latent advantages for the monarchists.
Empty frames litter the floors of the National Gallery, London, following the 1925 Revolution. As well as cultural treasures, the Exiles successfully absconded with many items of scientific, technical or other informational value
Still, under George V, the Imperial economy was focused primarily on basic subsistence and maintaining the fragile vestiges of the Empire. Many exile capitalists insisted on reestablishing their previous interests in Canada; these so-called ‘ghost’ corporations often carried the names of famous British firms but were only pale remnants. Many Exile capitalists were reduced to so-called ‘patent trolls’, quashing homegrown innovation and productivity. Fragmentary and duplicative Imperial businesses, often family-owned, were not efficient or dynamic compared to German and American industrial groups, and the Imperial financial system was in a state of total chaos. Many Exiles were completely destitute and relying on government pensions. In 1926, the Empire and French Republic-in-Exile announced a coordinated renunciation of their Weltkrieg war debt, the largest sovereign default in history. Abroad, this plunged the American economy into a crisis from which it would never fully recover, and almost led to war with the United States. At home, the immediate effect was to junk the value of the once-mighty Pound Sterling.
Chaos on Wall Street following the 1926 Anglo-French Default. The crisis effectively ended the 900-year history of the Pound Sterling, which first came into use in Anglo-Saxon times.
The Bright Young Thing economics that emerged in the early 1930s hybridized a broad range of new economic theories, united by a shared belief that the French and British Revolutions had proven 19th Century, neoclassical capitalism a failure. Prominent Bright Young Thing economists included John Maynard Keynes, who proposed a new middle theory between neoclassical economics and Marxist-Syndicalism; C.H. Douglas, who called for radical restructuring of the economic system to balance incomes and prices; and Sir Michel Routhier, whose theory of codeterminant corporatism aimed to overcome the antagonistic relationship between labor and management that had led to the Syndicalist revolutions.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), one of the key figure of Authoritarian Democratic economics. In the Empire, the Bright Young Things' lack of ideological attachments empowered a range of experimental, technocratic thinkers.
After taking power in 1936, the Bright Young Things empowered sympathetic economists and technocratic experts to radically reshape the Imperial economy. The system that emerged combined a market economy with strong state direction, substantial state-directed investment, the use of indicative economic planning to supplement the market mechanism, and the establishment of state directed ‘Crown Corporations’ in strategic sectors of the economy. Inefficient Exile ‘ghost’ firms were incentivized to merge and consolidate, and the discredited pre-Revolution business elite sidelined. The gerontocratic aristocracy were coopted or cowed - opponents of the regime risked having their considerable public debts suddenly called in. The Imperial Board of Labor (IBOL) was created to oversee a corporatist merger of management, labor, and the state, and to manage social services. Comprehensive government-administered healthcare, veterans, and social security programs were established, and a large real-term increase in tax disguised by the replacement of the Pound Sterling with a devalued Imperial Dollar. The new tax system was characterized by flat taxes on income and payroll, high value-added tax, and low corporate rates. As well as providing a social safety net, IBOL also directly regulated consumer purchasing power by the provision of dividends, vouchers, and a compensated pricing mechanism. This also became a powerful tool for social control; IBOL records tracked Imperial citizens from birth to death, tying compliance with official orthodoxy to social and material position. This social rating affected everything from an individual’s access to credit to their vacation time allowance.
Canadian propaganda poster promoting hydroelectric power efforts, c.1940. The Bright Young Things aspired to a very rapid industrialization of Canada and the other Dominions.
The new economy was supported by a radical reworking of the education system. The previously federalized education systems of Australasia and Canada were taken under central control. Private and parochial education were abolished, school hours extended to match adult working hours, and vacations limited. The government became urgently focused on child participation in the education system, both for economic and political reasons. In 1937, when Western Canadian communities complained about the impact of new school hours on children’s’ availability for the harvest, the government made military and prison labor available rather than alter its educational policies. Later mechanization initiatives superseded child labor entirely, and by 1942, 17 years of public education had been made mandatory for all children in the white Dominions. At the outset of the regime, teachers were targets of official suspicion; between 1936 and 1940, 1/3 of Australasian teachers were replaced, and teaching was soon a designated a ‘veteran preference’ profession. Educational curriculums were propagandized and radically restructured; by 1960, British children had a 50-hour school week, of which only six hours was dedicated to the humanities, versus 5 alone for ‘good citizenship’, 8 for the study of science, 10 for mathematics, and almost 25 for physical education. Imperial pedagogy was characterized by an emphasis on rote-learning, discipline, social cohesion, and rigor.
Imperial students undergoing standardized testing, c.1955. Tests had consequences not only for students; their entire family's social status could be affected by failure to perform.
Every two years, Imperial students undertook standardized Empire-wide tests, the outcome of which was either progression to a more advanced education level, repetition of a year, or channeling into non-academic vocational education. There were also physical standards: to successfully graduate high school in 1960, Imperial boys were required to successfully execute at least two pull-ups, 30 push-ups in 2 minutes, and run 1 mile in 10 minutes. (For girls, the push-up requirement was dropped). The most intellectually and physically promising students were funneled to ‘pioneer schools’, elite and highly disciplined pre-college programmes intended to foster the next generation of Imperial leaders. Other specialized schools existed for Olympic athletes, cultural arts, and sciences, all intended to identify and train those most likely to further glorify the Imperial way of life.
Students study at a specialist Imperial science school, c.1965. Growing up in the Empire was a highly-regimented experience; 'socially useful' talents were quickly identified and honed, while independent interests and self-expression were discouraged.
Universities were less directly controlled by the authorities, but an overall culture of political correctness ensured that academics in the Empire, like journalists, artists, and publishers, practiced a high degree of self-censorship. Imperial propaganda glorified technical and technological achievement and imposed strong conformist pressures on cultural output. In such an environment, independently-minded talents were forced to seek self-realization in non-ideological areas of intellectual activity, and STEM fields flourished. A commitment to ‘blue skies’ technological and scientific research helped close the technology gap with Germany and other adversaries in the 1930s, but the rigorous focus on military and industrial applications starved resources from other areas of research.
Pioneer school students training, c.1950. Intended as academies for the Empire's future military, political, and cultural elite, the demanding physical, academic, and political standards of the institutions were controversial, even within the Imperial hierarchy; German educationalist Kurt Hahn called them 'incubators for sociopathy'.
Supported by this social and cultural transformation, the New Imperial Economy became the engine of the authoritarian democratic revolution in the British Dominions after 1936, and in Britain itself after the Liberation. By the end of the Syndicalist War, every part of the Empire was functioning within the integrated system. Quebec had been one of the last hold-outs; wary of the specter of Quebecois nationalism, the Bright Young Things initially treated Quebec with kid-gloves, maintaining George V’s cautious truce with the Francophone province’s anti-Syndicalists strongman Maurice Duplessis. Duplessis was a strong opponent of the New Imperial Economy, which he regarded as quasi-Syndicalistic and threatening to his own brand of integralist social conservatism. For a while, the new regime accepted Duplessis’ construction of ‘one country, two systems’ but in 1939, Quebec voters, jealous of the enhanced social services available to other parts of Canada, toppled Duplessis’ Union Nationale in favor of the BYT-aligned Parti Creditise. (The BYT did not forget the slight: In 1949, no longer shielded by his office, Duplessis was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of public corruption, and his party dismantled.) For the authorities, this was an important lesson in the power of public bribery.
Syndicalist War-era Imperial propaganda targeted at French Canadians. By the Liberation of Britain, the Bright Young Things had succeeded in subverting the province's distinct identity, both by repression of independent voices and public bribery.
Connected by a then-state of the art system of powerful radio transmitters, the various outposts of the Imperial Economic Office guided the development of the economy and managed the value of the Imperial Dollar across the widespread empire, resulting in a so-called ‘Thirty Glorious Years’. This period was characterized by high productivity, high average wages and high consumption, undergirded by a comprehensive system of social benefits and low unemployment. Indeed, during this period, the primary concern of economic planners was productive bottlenecks caused by low population, resulting in pro-natalist policies such as the Three Child Policy, and open internal and international immigration policies. Millions of migrants and refugees were on the move during this period, and for the apolitical, and those duped by sunny Imperial propaganda, the Empire was an attractive destination due to high standards of living, official, if superficial, policies of multiethnicism, and broadly distributed prosperity. In 1960, for example, Canada had 408 automobiles per 1000 people, vs. 180 in Germany, and 46 in Russia.
A radio technician of the Imperial Central Bank tracks daily financial data while economic planners analyze, c.1945. New technologies like the radio and transcontinental telephone-lines made the management of globalized economic structures possible for the first time.
Though often understood as one continuous stretch of development, some modern economic historians have attempted to divide the Thirty Years into three distinct periods. The first period, from roughly 1936-1943, was fueled by the rapid development of the latent economic capacity of Canada and the other Dominions, and later the stimulus of the war effort. The next, from roughly 1943 to 1955, was characterized by the high capital outlays associated with the end of the Syndicalist War and the Reconstruction of Britain, offset by the large currency reserves the Empire accumulated as a safe harbor and raw resource exporter following the Berlin Crash, and the integration of the New American Order into the Imperial economic system. The third period, from roughly 1955-1968, was marked by the maximization of the economy, as the Dominions and New American Order reached the plateau of their productive capacity, leading to fiscal overheating. During this period, the New Imperial Economy became increasingly reliant on the recovering consumer economy of Britain, and the developing industrial economy of India, to maintain growth. At the same time, the traditionally autarkic Empire increasingly turned to international trade to ameliorate the overheating of its saturated internal markets. However, all three of these developments would introduce new political and economic stress into the system, threatening its cohesion, and eventually prompting radical economic and political change.
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Epilogue Two (Part One)
The Late Imperial Malaise (1963-1972)
The Imperial Atomics Northern England generating station looms over a churchyard, c.1970. For the third time in a century, the 'British world' was entering a period of profound political and cultural change.
The ‘Late Imperial Malaise’, as some British commentators have termed the period including the second half of the 1960s and beginning of the turbulent 1970s, had myriad social, political, and cultural roots. Often under-appreciated in existing analyses, however, is the role of economics. In 1968, the integrated Imperial economy fell into recession for the first time since 1936, a contagion which soon spread to other markets and affected the entire world for the first half of the next decade. It marked the end of the Empire’s ‘Thirty Glorious Years’ and roiled conventional economic wisdom. Like a great bridge built with a hidden design flaw, the New Imperial Economy had stood serenely, even majestically, for three decades. Over time, however, inefficiencies and failures of planning built up, vibrations ratcheting from one corner of the structure to another, growing and until the bridge was oscillating on its foundations, threatening to collapse the Imperial economic system, and potentially that of the entire world.The Late Imperial Malaise (1963-1972)
The Imperial Atomics Northern England generating station looms over a churchyard, c.1970. For the third time in a century, the 'British world' was entering a period of profound political and cultural change.
Post-war Imperial abundance. The tacit trade between economic prosperity and political liberty had always under-girded authoritarian democratic systems.
In the early 1930s, the early Bright Young Things lacked a comprehensive economic vision but understood that the tumbledown economies of the post-Revolution Dominions were unfit for their grand ambitions. The Revolution left a fragmented capitalist economic system, with the industries of Canada, Australasia and the rest oriented toward exports and resource extraction for the lost British homeland, and little domestic productive capacity. The Exiles escaped Britain with great advantages in technical expertise and liquid capital, aided by the Syndicalists’ initial open exit policy for counterrevolutionaries. Stunned by the scale of their victory and the royalist withdrawal, the early Syndicalist leadership failed to appreciate their enemies were absconding with valuable assets, not only physical and financial, but also intellectual. Unlike the bohemian intelligentsia, many of the UK’s practical scientists (engineers, statisticians, architects and the like) opposed the Revolution and chose to flee before the Syndicalists belatedly slammed the door. These were important latent advantages for the monarchists.
Empty frames litter the floors of the National Gallery, London, following the 1925 Revolution. As well as cultural treasures, the Exiles successfully absconded with many items of scientific, technical or other informational value
Still, under George V, the Imperial economy was focused primarily on basic subsistence and maintaining the fragile vestiges of the Empire. Many exile capitalists insisted on reestablishing their previous interests in Canada; these so-called ‘ghost’ corporations often carried the names of famous British firms but were only pale remnants. Many Exile capitalists were reduced to so-called ‘patent trolls’, quashing homegrown innovation and productivity. Fragmentary and duplicative Imperial businesses, often family-owned, were not efficient or dynamic compared to German and American industrial groups, and the Imperial financial system was in a state of total chaos. Many Exiles were completely destitute and relying on government pensions. In 1926, the Empire and French Republic-in-Exile announced a coordinated renunciation of their Weltkrieg war debt, the largest sovereign default in history. Abroad, this plunged the American economy into a crisis from which it would never fully recover, and almost led to war with the United States. At home, the immediate effect was to junk the value of the once-mighty Pound Sterling.
Chaos on Wall Street following the 1926 Anglo-French Default. The crisis effectively ended the 900-year history of the Pound Sterling, which first came into use in Anglo-Saxon times.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), one of the key figure of Authoritarian Democratic economics. In the Empire, the Bright Young Things' lack of ideological attachments empowered a range of experimental, technocratic thinkers.
Canadian propaganda poster promoting hydroelectric power efforts, c.1940. The Bright Young Things aspired to a very rapid industrialization of Canada and the other Dominions.
Imperial students undergoing standardized testing, c.1955. Tests had consequences not only for students; their entire family's social status could be affected by failure to perform.
Students study at a specialist Imperial science school, c.1965. Growing up in the Empire was a highly-regimented experience; 'socially useful' talents were quickly identified and honed, while independent interests and self-expression were discouraged.
Pioneer school students training, c.1950. Intended as academies for the Empire's future military, political, and cultural elite, the demanding physical, academic, and political standards of the institutions were controversial, even within the Imperial hierarchy; German educationalist Kurt Hahn called them 'incubators for sociopathy'.
Syndicalist War-era Imperial propaganda targeted at French Canadians. By the Liberation of Britain, the Bright Young Things had succeeded in subverting the province's distinct identity, both by repression of independent voices and public bribery.
A radio technician of the Imperial Central Bank tracks daily financial data while economic planners analyze, c.1945. New technologies like the radio and transcontinental telephone-lines made the management of globalized economic structures possible for the first time.
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