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SUMMARY:Monopoly Menace: The Rise and Fall of ‘Cartel Capitalism’ in  
 Western Europe\, 1918-1957 - Liane Hewitt (Sciences Po)
DTSTART:20241024T161500Z
DTEND:20241024T174500Z
UID:TALK222187@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:116791
DESCRIPTION:Cartels today are illegal and illegitimate across the globe. Y
 et until the end of World War II\, cartels were legal\, ubiquitous\, and e
 ven popular—especially in Europe. How\, then\, did cartels become bad? T
 hat is the question this dissertation poses. By the 1930s\, over 1\,000 mo
 nopolistic agreements regulated nearly half of world trade. International 
 cartels governed the interwar world economy: setting prices and output quo
 tas\, dividing world markets\, regulating trade flows\, and even controlli
 ng the transfer of patents across firms and sovereign state borders. I con
 ceptualize this regime as "cartel capitalism." Most cartels were headquart
 ered in industrial Europe. First\, I trace how a surprising consensus in i
 nterwar Europe—comprising national governments\, international organizat
 ions like the League of Nations\, industrialists\, led by the Internationa
 l Chamber of Commerce\, federalists\, and even socialists—backed cartels
  as a panacea to the problems of reconstruction after 1918: namely peace-b
 uilding and the failure of free-markets. In the wake of 1945\, however\, m
 ost countries in Western Europe—along with the new supranational Europea
 n Coal and Steel Community (1951) and European Economic Community (EEC)—
 started prohibiting cartels. My project illuminates the causes and consequ
 ences of this great reversal. Monopoly Menace reveals how Europe's transna
 tional reckoning with the shocks of the Great Depression\, fascism\, and t
 otal war produced a genuine anti-cartel revolution. Monopoly Menace ends b
 y illuminating how American\, British\, French\, and West German post-war 
 planners designed new national welfare-states\, the Bretton Woods Order\, 
 and the European Union on the control of private monopoly power.
LOCATION:Room 6\, Faculty of History
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