Eugen Peter Schwiedland: Review of Sigmund Schilder’s Entwicklungstendenzen der Weltwirtschaft (1916)

Schwiedland’s review examines Schilder’s two-volume study of world-economic development, published in 1912 and 1915. It follows the work from deliberate interventions in international exchange to natural factors and social processes, while combining respect for Schilder’s extensive knowledge with criticism of his excessive exposition. The central question is whether international exchange is shrinking relative to domestic commerce; Schilder’s answer is emphatically negative. His “developmental tendencies” are probabilistic forecasts, while the world economy acquires coherence through interconnected balances of payments and purposeful intervention.

The review first reconstructs the material basis of this confidence. Agricultural expansion accompanies industrial growth, supplying raw materials and food; substantial uncultivated areas are expected to sustain the future balance between the two. Commercial policy likewise does not simply oppose integration. Cartels and dumping weaken unprotected free trade, but Schilder regards moderate tariffs, combined with powers of retaliation, as a durable alternative. Even high protection may enlarge international commerce by stimulating industry, although it burdens domestic consumption. Schwiedland reports the particularly striking claim that trade wars can restrain powerful sectional interests.

Imperial expansion supplies another mechanism of integration, enlarging customs territories while organizing colonial economies around raw-material production and markets for metropolitan manufactures. Schilder expects colonies to become increasingly important customers, whereas dependent “open-door” territories will disappear through either sovereignty or incorporation into great-power domains. These arguments locate expanding exchange within unequal political relations. Similarly, capital-rich creditor countries can make loans conditional on payment in manufactures, mitigating export competition through financial leverage.

The discussion of natural and social factors develops this account of differentiated dependence. Schilder connects tropical and subtropical regions’ demographic growth, alleged industrial disadvantages, and specialized cultivation with their increasing reliance on world markets. Even disruption becomes evidence for the resilience of exchange:

Auch Improvisa, d. i. nicht berechenbare Vorkommnisse der Weltwirtschaft, von meist unerwünschter, oft geradezu katastrophaler Art, beleben den zwischenstaatlichen Handel, und das Ergebnis ist ein Aufstieg der Menschheit zu erleichterter Selbsterhaltung.

English translation: Improvisa too, that is, incalculable occurrences of the world economy, mostly of an undesirable, often downright catastrophic kind, enliven interstate trade, and the result is an ascent of mankind toward an easier self-preservation.

This passage gives the argument its strongest optimistic turn: unforeseen calamities can intensify commerce and ultimately facilitate human subsistence. Protection, meanwhile, generates countervailing effects. Reduced imports deprive carriers of return cargoes, lowering inward freight rates and partly offsetting tariffs, while raising export costs. Luxury imports and smuggling further qualify the apparent closure of protected economies. After noting the second volume’s twenty-five excursuses as evidence of exceptional reading, Schwiedland identifies Schilder’s expected outcome:

Im ganzen neigt er der Annahme zu, daß der Hochschutzzoll allmählich dahinschwinden und dann der mäßige Schutzzoll (der wehrhafte Freihandel) vorwiegen wird.

English translation: On the whole he inclines to the assumption that the high protective tariff will gradually disappear and that the moderate protective tariff (defensive free trade) will then predominate.

The forecast is thus one of regulated openness, not the elimination of commercial defenses. The review’s concluding conceptual distinction explains why wartime fragmentation need not extinguish world-economic development:

Weltmarkt ist die Folge der umfangreichen wirtschaftlichen Betätigungen, die über die eignen Landesgrenzen hinausgreifen, — Weltwirtschaft aber ein nach Organisation drängendes sozialökonomisches Gebilde.

English translation: The world market is the consequence of the extensive economic activities which reach out beyond one's own national frontiers — world economy, however, is a socio-economic formation pressing toward organization.

Cross-border activity produces a world market; a world economy additionally implies a social-economic formation tending toward organization. This distinction supports the expectation of reconstruction despite the war, without supplying a detailed institutional program. Schwiedland’s final judgment preserves the work’s historical value while returning to its principal literary defect:

Als Schilderung der zwischenstaatlichen Beziehungen vor dem Weltkriege beansprucht sie zwar bleibendes Interesse, dessen Befriedigung wird aber durch die überflüssige Breite seiner Darstellung leiden.

English translation: As a portrayal of interstate relations before the World War it may indeed claim lasting interest, but the satisfaction of that interest will suffer from the superfluous prolixity of his exposition.

The review consequently matters both as a compact account of Schilder’s arguments for persistent international interdependence and as a wartime assessment of the continuing usefulness—and unwieldiness—of his prewar economic synthesis.