Academy of Athens

Head of Research: Catherine Brégianni, Research Director, Αcademy of Athens/ Modern Greek History Research Centre

Summary: Analysis of the Great Depression as a transition from the transnational to the regional

To better establish the main working hypothesis, the project includes the study of the previous liberal market organization and the attempted mone-tary integration in the 1920s, a process during which the interwar crisis caused a rupture. From the same perspective, the micro-analytical pro-cessing of the 1930s crisis, as a case study of the Greek experience, incor-porates the parameters of the national economy which also accounted for the internal crisis (population movement, military expenditures in the 1910s and early 1920s). The limited chronological horizon of the project allows for the geographical broadening of the subject matter but mainly en-ables the use of multiple methodological tools.

The main goals, objectives, and challenges of the project

The pivotal axis of this project is the international crisis of the 1930s and the in-terpretation of the alternative strategies promoted for its handling. By way of in-tegrating a semiotic and conceptual level of analysis in this perception of the interwar crisis, it is expected that the research will also elucidate the interpretation of the crisis by social groups.

The 1929 Great Depression is fundamental with regards to the study of the interwar period in a socioeconomic context, as it diversified the perception of the State and market functioning amid European societies. In general, by including the cultural studies point of view, the interwar period is consid-ered as a laboratory of modernity and the proposed project intends to ex-plore this dimension via the economic facet. Specializing our instruments, the monetary factor is mainly a crisis indicator: money describes rather than provokes the crisis, it is then a crisis symptom and not its cause. But, sec-ondarily, monetary policies and regulations of monetary standards on an in-ternational level during the interwar period reflect a differentiation in the evolution of the market, an alteration caused by the crisis mechanism. A critical challenge of the project is then to determine -via qualitative and quantitative analysis- the passage from economic liberalism, generalised in the 1920s so as to tackle the financial effects of WWI, to economic protec-tionism and the growth of the State’s economic role.

The approach of the research intends to delineate the multiple narratives of the crisis. The political narrative, through the examination of national case studies, and the technocratic narrative, from the perspective of international economic institutions that intervene in order to establish a new monetary and financial order, converge with a different narrative: the visual represen-tation of social phenomena caused by the interwar crisis. Our aim is to showcase the new narratives of an economic phenomenon of social ramifi-cations, and therefore, using visual semiotics and archival material, to un-dermine a narrative that exclusively comes from above.

To conclude, the project aims to eschew a one-sided interpretation of the interwar crisis and to present the alternative paradigms, both on the eco-nomic-political level and on the social terrain, aiming at the exploration of highly interactive and coherent research axes.

• Due to the transversal character of the research, the evaluation of the polit-ical discourse of the various elites as actors of the conjuncture and the emergence of international institutions as fora where the different models of anti-crisis politics intersect are main research points. Yet these converge with the objective parameters of the conjuncture in which the monetary fac-tor plays a

crucial role. The introduction of “objective” quantitative indica-tors into a theoretical, or political narrative of the interwar period leads to the appraisal of the phenomena under examination, namely the emergence of the transition from the economic liberalism of the 1920s (James, 1986, among others), to the more or less centralised policies of the 1930s, and to the introversion of the state economies. In addition, the introduction of the geographical dimension to the subject is expected to determine the axis of space from the perspective of geo-history. In the context of this particular project, the geographical factor seeks to highlight the imbalance and asym-metry in relation to the growth brought about by the market structure and always with regard to the economic policies applied. This specific percep-tion expands the perspectives adopted with regard to governmentality and its territorial dimension.

• Especially with regard to the study of the Greek case, the interwar eco-nomic crisis is analysed from the point of view of the financial variables in correspondence with the monetary fluctuation. The study of the Greek par-adigm is examined within its European context: despite the fact that the economic aspects of the Greek interwar period have been explored, national historical production has focused on the study of the internal sphere, high-lighting mainly the role of national political actors. This research attempts to extend this perspective, and to integrate the transnational features of the economic policies pursued in Greece during the interwar period.

• The intersection of financial parameters - in quantitative terms - with monetary circulation but also with GDP per capita, works to this end while, at the same time, is a crucial parameter for the evaluation of interwar statis-tical data. Moreover, focusing on exchange rate floating (since the stabiliza-tion of the drachma (1928) was withdrawn in 1932 and the national curren-cy entered a floating exchange rate period) will allow the assessment of public investment in the 1930s, in particular the real capital investment in agriculture; the latter was supposed to be a central axis of the central eco-nomic policy in the 1930s. Furthermore, an innovative element of the pro-ject is the creation of data series on the payment of public debt in gold after the 1932 default, as well as the quantitative mapping of the negotiations of the Greek State with its creditors in the same period. Finally, visual repre-sentations of the crisis constitute a new axis that can relate, from the histori-cal subject's point of view, past experiences to expectations for the future.

In particular, the above are explored in relation to specific research axes, starting from a global perception and concluding with the case studies. A listing of these axes in relation to the state of current research is as follows:

• Transnational Monetary Integration in Interwar Europe and the Turning Point of the Great Depression

• Geo-Historical Differentiations in the Analysis of the Interwar Crisis

• South-eastern Europe in the Context of the Interwar Crisis

• A Micro-Analytical Approach to the Greek Interwar Crisis

• Monetary Fluctuation and National Accounts.

• Visual Representations of the Greek Interwar Crisis

From the point of view of Greek Economic History, the research aspires to be innovative as it integrates and analyses local economic phenomena within the framework of transnational economic policies: it contextualizes Greek Studies in general within a global framework, taking into considera-tion that a considerable part of the examined national phenomena are parallel to the

European ones (for instance the Greek interwar dictator-ship, or the refugees settlement during the 1920s). Beyond an analysis of economic actors on a local (i.e. national) level, the project also integrates their impact within the general context.