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Long Depression



The Long Depression (1873 – 1896) was a depression that affected much of the world from the early 1870s until the mid-1890s, contemporary of the Second Industrial Revolution. At the time it was regarded as the Great Depression, until the more severe Great Depression occurred in the 1930s. It was most notable in Western Europe and North America, but this is in part because reliable data from the period is most readily available in those parts of the world. Britain is often considered the hardest hit by the Long Depression, and during this period it lost much of its large industrial lead over the economies of Continental Europe. The Depression is usually believed to have ended by 1897. The global economy grew at an impressive rate from that year to the start of World War I.


Two decades of contraction

The Long Depression was not a particularly deep one, unlike the more famous Great Depression. The period saw a number of years of growth, but more years of contraction. Throughout the period prices fell and production grew more slowly when compared to earlier and later eras. Thus, some historians prefer to speak of a series of smaller, unconnected economic downturns, rather than a Depression. Data from this period is not ideal, however, and it is difficult to get exact figures, contributing to the uncertainty.


Causes of the crisis

The causes of the Depression are also debated. The most immediate cause, and the date that is often used as the start of the Depression, was the collapse of the Vienna Stock Exchange on May 9, 1873. Others have argued the depression was rooted in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War that hurt the French economy and forced them to make large reparations payments to Germany. Monetarists believe that the depression was caused by a world shortage of gold that undermined the gold standard, and that the 1848 California Gold Rush, and more importantly the 1886 Witwatersrand Gold Rush in South Africa and the 1898-99 Klondike Gold Rush helped alleviate the crisis. Others point out the Kondratiev waves, theorizing that the Second Industrial Revolution was causing large shifts in the economies of many states imposing transition costs which may also have played a role in causing the depression.


Reactions to the crisis

Like the Great Depression, the Long Depression saw many nations of the world resort to protectionism to shore up faltering industries. Influenced by List's nationalist argument for industrial protection, Bismarck abandoned the German free trade policy in 1879, enacting tariffs over the objections of his National Liberal Party allies. France, which had adopted free trade during the Second Empire (1852-1870), also abandoned it, while Benjamin Harrison won the 1888 US presidential election on a protectionist ticket. Only the United Kingdom retained low tarriffs enacted in 1846 Corn Laws.


 


Besides tariff policy, governments of the time were not closely involved in managing the economy. According to the tenets of classic liberalism, it was generally believed that it was not the government's role to intervene in the economy, and thus little was done.


 


The Long Depression has also contributed to the revival of colonialism leading to the New Imperialism period, symbolized by the scramble for Africa, as the western powers sought new markets for their goods. According to Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the "unlimited expansion of power" followed the "unlimited expansion of capital".

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