World-System UK Counterfactual (1800-1950) No WWI, Great Depression or WWII

 

This Page is Under Construction.

There is no simple explanation for why the Early 20th Century was so catastrophic for the World System: World War I (WWI), the Great Depression (GD) and World War II (WWII), all in a row, all followed by a series of minor wars, crises and unresolved problems until the Present. 

Imagine that you were British inventor, physicist and engineer Archibald Montgomery Low (1888-1956) and you had heard about George Vacher de Lapogue predictions about growth and catastrophe in the 20th Century, but you found them a little wacky.** So you produced the graphic above (based on mental models, mathematical equations and speculation) predicting the path of British Development for the first half of the 20th Century to check de Lapoque's predictions. Each Attractor Path was based on a different Geopolitical Alignment:

• WE
• BAU
• DE
  
• RW
• US
• W

Notes

**  Archibald Montgomery Low (1888-1956) produced many accurate and many not so accurate forecasts. He did not forecast World War I, the Great Depression, World War II or any future Geopolitical Alignments for Great Britain. George Vacher de Lapogue, however, did based on exponential growth and theories of White Supremacy (needless to say, we are still dealing with White Supremacy in the Trump Administration and these problems never seem to go away).

Wikipedia

• Historiography of the causes of World War I Historians writing about the origins of World War I have differed over the relative emphasis they place upon the factors involved. Changes in historical arguments over time are in part related to the delayed availability of classified historical archives.
• Schroeder, Paul W. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: The Origins of the First World War Reconsidered (2025), influential essays by a leading historian
  • Schroeder, Paul W. (2007). "Necessary conditions and World War I as an unavoidable war". In Levy, Jack; Goertz, Gary (eds.). Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals. Routledge. pp. 147–236. ISBN 978-1-134-10140-5.
  • Schroeder, Paul W. (2004). "Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War". Systems, Stability, and Statecraft: Essays on the International History of Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan US. ISBN 978-1-4039-6357-4.
• The Long Nineteenth Century a term for the 125-year period beginning with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, and ending with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was coined by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and later popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.
• Kennedy, M. (2014) Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history': Niall Ferguson
• Crafts, N. (2014) Walking wounded: The British economy in the aftermath of World War I
• What is the Best Counterfactual for the Long Nineteenth Century?
• The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II.
• Hypothetical Victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of the Second World War (1939–1945)  a popular topic in the alternate history sub-genre of speculative fiction and in scholarly works that discuss the possible alternative path of history.
• Pasdirtz, G. W. (1981) Instability and Late Nineteenth Century German Development UW-Madison Thesis.
• Timeline of the Great Depression The initial economic collapse which resulted in the Great Depression can be divided into two parts: 1929 to mid-1931, and then mid-1931 to 1933. The initial decline lasted from mid-1929 to mid-1931.
• Timeline of British History 19th Century
• Timeline of British History 20th Century
• Geopolitical Economy a contemporary Marxist approach to understanding the capitalist world historically. It was proposed by Radhika Desai in her Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire as a critique of contemporary mainstream theories of International political economy (IPE) and International relations (IR).

UKL19 Measurement Model

Three component state variables of the UKL19 Model explain 100% of the Variation in the indicators: UK1 = (Overall Growth), UK2 = (XREAL+X-L-HOURS-U) Export-Employment Controller and UK3 = (X-XREAL-Q-N) Malthusian Export-Price Controller.

UKL19 Time Plot

Overall growth in the UKL19 model continued through the Nineteenth Century and may or may not have been approaching a steady state around 1900. The Export-Employment and Malthusian Export-Price Controllers hit a minimum just before 1860  (see the Boiler Plate for a discussion of Historical Growth Controllers).

UKL19 BAU Forecast

AIC Statistics

All the models estimated from the Maddison Data Set are unstable (see the Boiler Plate). The best short-term (year-to-year) model is linkage to Western Europe (WEL19 Model) . The best Attractor Model is linkage to the US (USL19 Model) The Random Walk (RW) and other models have overlapping AIC Confidence Intervals.

UKL19 BAU System Matrix

The model is unstable and is very close to a Random Walk (RW).

ChatGPT

Google Gemini

What is the Best Counterfactual for the Long Ninteenth Century?

The possible victory of Germany in World War II (WWII) is the standard counterfactual for the Long Nineteenth Century (see the Notes below and the video above). Although interesting, I'm not sure it's the best counterfactual, at least from the standpoint of World-Systems Theory (WST).

From the WST perspective a more interesting counterfactual is "What If WWI, the Great Depression and WWII had never happened". What would the history of Long Twentieth Century have been?

If we have systems models of the major countries in both the 19th and 20th Centuries, we can forecast the 19th Century models into the 20th Century to create an alternative history where WWI, the Great Depression and WWII never happened. When then compare the actual paths of the comparable 20th Century models to see what was actually different.

One possible problem is that the data for the 19th Century, the War and Inter-War Periods are not great for most countries in the World-System. However, what we can do is focus on the estimated Systems Models which do show variability across the major countries over the time period (0-2000+, see examples here).

In future posts, I will start with the World System (WL19 and WE20) and then go on to the other major countries in the Long Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Germany, the UK, France, the US, Italy, Japan, Russia, etc.).

I have already started with some countries, for example France as an example (here). From the FRL19 model, it turns out that the Great Depression and possibly the collapse during WWI can be predicted in France from 19th Century data. The same is not the case for the DEL19D Model (Pasdirtz, 1981).

Notes

• The Long Nineteenth Century a term for the 125-year period beginning with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, and ending with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was coined by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and later popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.
• The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II.
• Hypothetical Victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of the Second World War (1939–1945)  a popular topic in the alternate history sub-genre of speculative fiction and in scholarly works that discuss the possible alternative path of history.
• Pasdirtz, G. W. (1981) Instability and Late Nineteenth Century German Development UW-Madison Thesis.

Wikipedia

• Historiography of the causes of World War I Historians writing about the origins of World War I have differed over the relative emphasis they place upon the factors involved. Changes in historical arguments over time are in part related to the delayed availability of classified historical archives.
• Schroeder, Paul W. Stealing Horses to Great Applause: The Origins of the First World War Reconsidered (2025), influential essays by a leading historian
  • Schroeder, Paul W. (2007). "Necessary conditions and World War I as an unavoidable war". In Levy, Jack; Goertz, Gary (eds.). Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals. Routledge. pp. 147–236. ISBN 978-1-134-10140-5.
  • Schroeder, Paul W. (2004). "Embedded Counterfactuals and World War I as an Unavoidable War". Systems, Stability, and Statecraft: Essays on the International History of Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan US. ISBN 978-1-4039-6357-4.
• The Long Nineteenth Century a term for the 125-year period beginning with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, and ending with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was coined by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and later popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.
• Kennedy, M. (2014) Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history': Niall Ferguson
• Crafts, N. (2014) Walking wounded: The British economy in the aftermath of World War I
• What is the Best Counterfactual for the Long Nineteenth Century?
• The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II.
• Hypothetical Victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of the Second World War (1939–1945)  a popular topic in the alternate history sub-genre of speculative fiction and in scholarly works that discuss the possible alternative path of history.
• Pasdirtz, G. W. (1981) Instability and Late Nineteenth Century German Development UW-Madison Thesis.
• Timeline of the Great Depression The initial economic collapse which resulted in the Great Depression can be divided into two parts: 1929 to mid-1931, and then mid-1931 to 1933. The initial decline lasted from mid-1929 to mid-1931.
• Timeline of British History 19th Century
• Timeline of British History 20th Century
• Timeline of German History comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Germany and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Germany. See also the list of German monarchs and list of chancellors of Germany and the list of years in Germany.
• Geopolitical Economy a contemporary Marxist approach to understanding the capitalist world historically. It was proposed by Radhika Desai in her Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire as a critique of contemporary mainstream theories of International political economy (IPE) and International relations (IR).
• Geography of Germany a country in Central and Western Europe that stretches from the Alps, across the North European Plain to the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and is seventh-largest country by area in the continent. The area of Germany ranked 63rd and covers 357,600 km² (138,070 sq mi), consisting of 349,250 km² (134,846 sq mi) of land and 8,350 km² (3,224 sq mi) of waters, smaller than Japan but larger than the Republic of the Congo.
• Rostow's Stages of Growth  The Rostovian take-off model (also called "Rostow's Stages of Growth") is one of the major historical models of economic growth based on Auguste Comte's earlier "law of three stages." It was postulated by W. W. Rostow in his book The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). The model postulates that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages, of varying length (The Stages of Economic Growth pdf file).

World-System French Counterfactual (1800-1950) No WWI, Great Depression or WWII

Dec 24, 2025. The New York Times is reporting (here) that "for the second consecutive year ...[France has failed]... to agree to a new national budget by the end of the legislative calendar." It is difficult to understand what is going on in France without some historical background, specifically how France responded to World War I and the Great Depression. ChatGPT reports that 

In this post, I am going to use France's economic statistics in the Long 19th Century to forecast France's economic performance in the early 20th Century. The multi-model forecasts based on different input assumptions for the FR19 Model are presented in the graphic at the beginning of this post. The results are somewhat surprising!

I looked at the following possible drivers for the French Economy: (1) None (Business-as-Usual, BAU, and Random Walk, RW), (2) Technical Productivity, TECHP, (3) the World System (W), (4) Western Europe (WE), (4) Germany (DE) and the United States (US). The best model, using the Akaike Information Criterion was US input ([-1215 < AIC = -1138 < -1077]). All the models were unstable (some were cyclical, see the Eigenvalues below in the Notes with the AIC Statistics) and  collapsed (except the RW) at some point in the Early 20th Century. 

At first, you might think that the models are predicting the Great Depression. They are not!** We know from the historical record that the French Economy did not collapse as a result of shocks from WWI, the Great Depression and WWII (according to ChatGPT, in any event).

Then, how are we to understand the forecasts from the 19th Century Models? To understand the French Economy in the 19th and early 20th Century, we have to look back further before the first (1878-79) and the second (1848) French Revolutions. I'll do that in future posts.

For this post, let's take the German perspective as embodied in the Schlieffen Plan to invade and neutralize France before the First World War. Assume (counterfactually) that Field Marshall Alfred von Schlieffen had output from the FR19 BAU model (here) or at least understood that France was a collapsing power. The idea of a lightning first strike to neutralize France before fighting Russia on the Eastern front would seem attractive and necessary. 

Of course, everything changed for France after WWI, during the Inter-War Years. France reacted very conservatively to the Great Depression and stabilized the economy (or at least turned it into a Random Walk).

Returning the present Budgetary Crisis in France, it would be reasonable to predict that any fundamental changes would require formation of a New Republic (see history here). A budget crisis is, historically, not significant enough to trigger major political change.

You can stabilize the FR19 BAU model with instructions in the code (here). For more information about data sources and how the models were constructed, see the Boiler Plate. You can follow a Blog Roll of other postings I have done on the French Economy here.

Notes

** This may be too fine a point. The  FR19 Model is characterizing the French Economy as in Growth-and-Collapse mode after 1900. And, Growth-and-Collapse was  certainly a factor as\s France faced WWI, the Great Depression and WWII. The historical events of the early 20th Century, however, are more complicated than the state of the French economy. There is no simple monocausal explanation.

• The Long Nineteenth Century a term for the 125-year period beginning with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, and ending with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was coined by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and later popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.
• What is the Best Counterfactual for the Long Nineteenth Century?
• The Man in the High Castle is an alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick, first published in 1962, which imagines a world in which the Axis powers won World War II.
• Hypothetical Victory of the Axis powers over the Allies of the Second World War (1939–1945)  a popular topic in the alternate history sub-genre of speculative fiction and in scholarly works that discuss the possible alternative path of history.
• Pasdirtz, G. W. (1981) Instability and Late Nineteenth Century German Development UW-Madison Thesis.

FR19 AIC Statistics

The Akaike Information Criterion statistics show that (1) all the models were unstable and (2) the best model was input from the US19 BAU model.

FR19 Measurement Model

Three components from the FR19 BAU model explain almost 100% of the variance in the indicator variables. The components are (1) FR1=(Overall Growth), (2) FR2=(0.5633 Q + 0.5979 X - 0.2781 N - 0.4070 HOURS) Malthusian Export Employment Controller, and (3) FR3=(0.75876 XREAL - 0.3849 X - 0.4924 HOURS) Export-Price Employment Controller.

FR19 System Matrix

The FR19 BAU System matrix is unstable with two strong negative feedback components, F[1,3] = -0.05130896 and F[2,3] = -0.05297408, both from the Export-Price Employment Controller (recall that World Trade Collapsed during the InterWar years).

World-System (1800-1900) How did Latin America Respond to Shocks?

 

This Page is Under Construction.

In an earlier post (here) I investigated whether Latin America, in the 19th Century, benefited from the Monroe Doctrine. As a Geopolitical Alliance, Latin America benefited slightly from US intervention up to the 1880s, but not after that. However, the Monroe Doctrine was designed to minimize European influence in Latin America. One way to operationalize "interference" is to ask how the LA_19_US_input model handled shocks compared to the LA_19_WE_input.

In the 19th Century, interference in Latin America from Western Europe, the UK and the US is best viewed as a Random Walk.

A one standard deviation shock LA Growth (LA1) had effects extending out over about a half decade (see the graphic above). However, the Western European shocks were initially negative, meaning that growth in Western Europe depressed Latin American Growth. All the effects are small compared to the size of the shock. 

In fact, the AIC statistics above shows that Growth Shocks are best viewed as a Random Walk. For comparison, the three models are presented below.

Notes

• The Long Nineteenth Century a term for the 125-year period beginning with the onset of the French Revolution in 1789, and ending with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was coined by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, and later popularized by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.

LA_19_US_Input Model

LA_19_WE_Input Model

LA_19_UK_Input Model

LA_19_MM

US_19_MM

WE_19_MM

UK_19_MM