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The Shock of the Global

The Shock of the Global

The 1970s in Perspective

Edited by Niall Ferguson, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel J. Sargent

ISBN 9780674061866

Publication date: 10/15/2011

From the vantage point of the United States or Western Europe, the 1970s was a time of troubles: economic “stagflation,” political scandal, and global turmoil. Yet from an international perspective it was a seminal decade, one that brought the reintegration of the world after the great divisions of the mid-twentieth century. It was the 1970s that introduced the world to the phenomenon of “globalization,” as networks of interdependence bound peoples and societies in new and original ways.

The 1970s saw the breakdown of the postwar economic order and the advent of floating currencies and free capital movements. Non-state actors rose to prominence while the authority of the superpowers diminished. Transnational issues such as environmental protection, population control, and human rights attracted unprecedented attention. The decade transformed international politics, ending the era of bipolarity and launching two great revolutions that would have repercussions in the twenty-first century: the Iranian theocratic revolution and the Chinese market revolution.

The Shock of the Global examines the large-scale structural upheaval of the 1970s by transcending the standard frameworks of national borders and superpower relations. It reveals for the first time an international system in the throes of enduring transformations.

Praise

  • An illuminating book that provides a new way to look at the international history of the 1970s. It redirects our attention away from the familiar narrative and instead places the decade in a new perspective that allows us to evaluate longer-term trends, including the evolution of global society, the dynamics of the international economy, the breakup of colonial empires, the impact of popular culture, and the declining realm for autonomous national choices. This superb work will be greeted with enthusiasm.

    —Melvyn P. Leffler, author of For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War

Authors

  • Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School.
  • Charles S. Maier is Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Council on Foreign Relations, he has written a number of award-winning books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe, The Unmasterable Past, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany, and Once Within Borders.
  • Erez Manela is Professor of History, Harvard University.
  • Daniel Sargent is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Book Details

  • 448 pages
  • 5-11/16 x 8-15/16 inches
  • Belknap Press

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