Just over a century ago, John Maynard Keynes lamented the dangers of being complacent about globalisation. In 1919, in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes noted that, before the recently ended first world war, “the inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, in such quantity as he might see fit, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep.”
He (economists assumed, then, that economic actors were male) could “adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world” and “secure forthwith, if he wished it, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality”. Moreover, this state of affairs was “normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement”.
Thus “the projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper.” In plain English: people had taken globalisation so completely for granted that they rarely gave it much thought — and assumed that the free movement of people, money and objects would continue indefinitely. War had seemed like a relic of the past.