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Subproject C06
Foreign trade securitisation - Companies, the state and Hermes Kreditversicherungs-AG (1949-1984)

2. Funding period (2018-2021)

The project examines the conditions under which a security-oriented foreign trade regime emerged in Great Britain and Germany from the late 19th century to the beginning of the Second World War. In the interwar period, the instrument of state export credit insurance or guarantees represented a new means in the two nations under consideration, with which states sought to control foreign trade for security policy considerations and to persuade companies to make security-compliant decisions, whereby the companies concerned acted quite stubbornly. The project pursues the working hypothesis that after the so-called "first wave of globalization" in the last third of the 19th century, foreign trade was subjected to a politicization and securitization as a result of the First World War, which led to a qualitatively new perception and orientation of action among export-oriented companies, trading companies, insurance companies and state actors; however, the overemphasis on security for national actors paradoxically increased uncertainty in world trade as a whole and exacerbated the Great Depression.

Cooperation Partners