Effects of the Great Depressio essays

Effects of the Great Depressio essays The introduction of the discussion will focus on the origins of the Great Depression and the escalating events that led to it. Thiswill provide adequate foundations to bring up questions and attempt to answer them in an objective fashion as to why and how the Depression affected different industrialized countries in different ways. The core of the debate will consist of detailed comparable analyses of the consequences of the Depression with an emphasis onthe economic aspects. The conclusion will provide a brief overview of the ways used by the different governments to get out of that dark episode of world economic history. When studying the Great Depression and it's effects, it is not unusual for historians to choose World War I as a starting point for their investigation. The reason for that is the importance of the repercussions the conflict had on the economies of all the countries that were involved in it. First of all, the War made it impossible for Europe t o maintain previous levels of production. For example, before the War,France, the U.K. and Germany accounted for about 60 percent1 of the world's exports of manufactured goods, a share of the market which they could not sustain during the conflict. Consequently, Europe took many of its markets to the U.S. and Japan. The stunted growth of the European economies meant a lower demand for raw materials, which in turn lowered the demand for European exports. In agriculture, things didn't look any better, as it was the sector which employed the most people. At the end of World War I,Europe was forced to import food from the U.S.. Moreover, these transactions were conducted on a credit basis since Europe could not afford to pay for its purchase at that time. Clearly, the U.S. was going from being a traditional debtor of Europe before World War I to becoming its creditor: America had financed the war and it was issuing loans for its reconstruct...