The New Deal: A Global History provides a radically new interpretation of a pivotal period in US history. The first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context, the book compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe--not just in Europ

Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations xi Prologue 1 Chapter 1 A Global Crisis 10 A Fragile Boom 10 The Crisis and Its Origins 24 Chapter 2 In Search of New Beginnings 45 Setting Stages 45 Many New Deals 56 Planning and Mobilization 90 Chapter 3 Into the Vast External Realm 121 Gold, Silver, and Other Bombs 121 Good Neighbors 139 Borders, Hard and Soft 171 Chapter 4 Redefining Boundaries 190 Deeper into the Alphabet Soup 190 Broadening Security 218 Roads Traveled, Built, and Untraveled 242 Chapter 5 The American World Order 261 The New Deal State at War 261 A Global Legacy 278 Notes 301 Bibliography 351 Index 415

"The first book to globalize the history of the New Deal, this is an amazing tour de force with fresh insights on virtually every page. Many historians will wish they had written it."—Akira Iriye, Harvard University"This indispensable book reveals the national, comparative, and global dimensions of the Great Depression and New Deal. Attentive to the global circuitry of policy options and supported by a vast knowledge of other national responses, Kiran Klaus Patel transforms our understanding of the formation and nationalist shape of the New Deal. One cannot claim to understand the New Deal without reading this book."—Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History"Kiran Klaus Patel boldly advances the effort to transnationalize historians' understanding of the New Deal, convincingly demonstrating the need to understand the United States in the 1930s as embedded in a larger world confronting a shared crisis. This formidable book decisively challenges exceptionalist claims about mid-twentieth-century reform in the United States."—Paul A. Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines"A stunning world tour, full of surprises and insights into government action in the 1930s in many nations and across a vast policy terrain. This is comparative and transnational history at its best."—Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present"The New Deal is usually thought of as a quintessentially American historical moment. But as Kiran Klaus Patel's penetrating book shows, it was also a deeply international event, both in terms of Americans transmitting their ideas abroad as well as importing innovations from often-unexpected places around the world. Insightful and original, The New Deal: A Global History will challenge preconceptions and change the way we perceive a seminal moment in world history."—Andrew Preston, University of Cambridge"Kiran Klaus Patel provides a strikingly broad and comprehensive treatment of the New Deal and brings a remarkable range of global knowledge to bear on the subject. An extraordinary mine of information, this unique and valuable book will be an indispensable reference point in future debates over the global 1930s."—Daniel T. Rodgers, professor emeritus, Princeton University"An astute, powerfully synthetic global history of the New Deal, this book covers a vast terrain, substantively and geographically, blending a discerning reading of the enormous literature on the New Deal with judiciously targeted primary research. The result is a fresh perspective on the global dimensions of innovation within the American state—and a book for which there is an overwhelming need."—James Sparrow, University of Chicago