Capitalism in Chaos : : How the Business Elites of Europe Prospered in the Era of the Great War / / Máté Rigó.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Rigó, Máté,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (378 p.) :; 34 b&w halftones, 4 maps

Capitalism in Chaos explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amidst war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policy makers in Central Europe as the region became crucially important for German and subsequently French plans of economic and geopolitical expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on extensive research in sixteen archives, five languages, and four states, Maté Rigó demonstrates that wartime destruction and the birth of "war millionaires" were two sides of the same coin. Despite the recent centenaries of the Great War and the Versailles peace treaties, knowledge of the overall impact of war and border changes on business life remain sporadic, based on scant statistics and misleading national foci. Consequently, most histories remain wedded to the viewpoint of national governments and commercial connections across national borders.Capitalism in Chaos changes the static historical perspective by presenting Europe's East as the economic engine of the continent. Rigó accomplishes this paradigm shift by focusing on both supranational regions—including East-Central and Western Europe—as well as the eastern and western peripheries of Central Europe, Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania, from the 1870s until the 1920s. As a result, Capitalism in Chaos offers a concrete, lively history of economics during major world crises, with a contemporary consciousness towards inequality and disparity during a time of collapse.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Note on Place-Names -- Introduction -- 1. Industrialists and Consolidation in Central Europe (1867–1914) -- 2. Costly Nationalism: Industrialists on the Eve of 1914 -- 3. Millionaires of Mitteleuropa -- 4. The Enemy’s Money: Economic Retaliation in the Great War -- 5. Profiting from Victory: Property Transfers in the Shadow of the 1918 Armistices -- 6. France’s East-Central European “Empire” after Versailles -- 7. Imperial Currencies after the Fall of Empires: The Conversion of the German Paper Mark and the Austro-Hungarian Crown at the End of the First World War -- 8. Return Home? Alsatian Industrialists in France and Germany after 1918 -- 9. A Marriage of Convenience? Austro-Hungarian Industrialists in Greater Romania -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index