War, Revolution and the Great Depression in the Global Wheat Trade, 1917–39

As Francine McKenzie pointed out in her Introduction to this volume, there is a reciprocal relationship between trade and conflict: while trade can ignite conflict so, too, can conflict reshape trade. The international wheat trade during the interwar period of the twentieth century provides a graphic illustration of this relationship. The First World War and the Russian Revolution ruptured existing trade patterns such that only four countries outside the areas of armed conflict — United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia — dominated the export trade until the Second World War. At the same time, the exigencies of world depression combined with preparations for further conflict put a premium on food security and autarkic economic policy. This intensified existing rivalries among the Big Four wheat exporters and the resulting international wheat glut was instrumental in accelerating protectionism and creating trade blocs. The desire for domestic control over food supplies lay behind the Japanese Empire’s invasion of Manchuria and repopulation of the regions with Japanese landowners and farmers, as well as Nazi Germany’s Lebensraum policy to enslave and kill Slavic populations in Eastern Europe and Russia and use the vacated lands to create an agricultural surplus for Germans. 1