Was Global Economic Governance Born Between the Wars?

This article offers a critical assessment of works tracing the birth of global economic governance back to the interwar era. As part of the revival of international history of this period, these books and articles make a decisive contribution to a better understanding of this period. The thesis they defend, however, exaggerates the caesura represented by the First World War, and does not adequately account for how the globalized economy of the late nineteenth century was governed. Drawing on the literature on the international organizations that emerged from the 1870s onwards, as well as on original research on international financial control institutions, this article highlights the need to reconnect this period to the history of global economic governance.