Nicholas Mulder is an assistant professor of modern European history at Cornell University and regular contributor to Foreign Policy and The Nation.
“Valuable . . . offers many lessons for Western policy makers
today.”—Paul Kennedy, Wall Street Journal
“Lucidly written, scholarly and thought-provoking.”—Gideon Rachman,
Financial Times
“Mulder . . . looks at sanctions over the three decades after the
First World War—and reaches unsettling conclusions. . . . The
lessons are sobering.”—The Economist
“Mulder charts how the rise of economic sanctions and blockade
during the interwar years, as a tool to enforce peace, drove the
autarkic policies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, ultimately
destabilising the international system rather than fortifying
it.”—Robin Harding, Financial Times
“Mulder argues in his impeccably well-researched and, because of
its timeliness, gripping book that ‘sanctions did not stop
political and economic disintegration but accelerated it’ in the
interwar period. . . . Mulder’s book provides an uncomfortable
warning that while sanctions have sometimes worked, they have also
been contentious, ineffective and counterproductive.”—Emma Duncan,
The Times
“This revelatory history of ‘economic warfare’—blockades and
sanctions—reminds us that up to 400,000 people died of
blockade-induced malnutrition in Central Europe in the First World
War, plus 500,000 in the Ottoman Middle East. You will look at
twentieth-century history with fresh eyes.”—Noel Malcolm, Daily
Telegraph, “Perfect Holiday Reads”
"A fortuitously timed history of the use of economic sanctions
during the interwar period of the 20th century. Their mixed success
cautions against hoping that the West’s sanctions against Russia
can bring about an end to war in Ukraine."—The Economist,
"Best Books of 2022"
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022
“As Nicholas Mulder shows in The Economic Weapon, a much longer
history lies behind the invention of modern sanctions.”—Tom
Stevenson, London Review of Books
“A fascinating new book. . . . Taken as a superbly researched work
of history, it lights up key aspects of the twentieth century in a
deeply thought-provoking way.”—Noel Malcolm, Daily Telegraph
“Original and persuasive analysis. . . . For those who see economic
sanctions as a relatively mild way of expressing displeasure at a
country’s behavior, this book, charting how they first emerged as a
potential coercive instrument during the first decades of the
twentieth century, will come as something of a
revelation.”—Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs
“[A] superb study of sanctions during the interwar era. . . .
Mulder’s fascinating story weaves together politics, economics and
law [and] provides invaluable insight into the experience of
sanctions one hundred years ago.”—Max Harris, Times Literary
Supplement
“An excellent historical study. . . . Western countries have
directed an unprecedentedly severe battery of punitive economic
measures against Russia. . . . For those of us seeking better to
understand this reaction and gauge its likely efficacy, there is no
better place to turn than Cornell historian Nicholas Mulder’s
erudite and uncannily timely book on the origins of economic
sanctions."—Alexander Watson, Literary Review
“Mulder’s examination of the details of economic diplomacy in the
interwar era makes for fascinating reading, and at the least it
will remind us that, in the case of determined dictators, something
more than sanctions may be needed.”—Matthew Partridge, Money Week,
“Book of the Week”
“There are few books that can be said to be timely like Nicholas
Mulder's The Economic Weapon . . . [it is] an important
contribution to the history of economics and international
relations in the interwar period.”—Roman Köster, sehepunkte
Winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize for best first book by
the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
(SHAFR)
“The Economic Weapon is a superb account of the history of
sanctions, and their profound impact on international politics.
Although sanctions were once heralded as a force for peace, Mulder
shows they often fail and sometimes make war more likely or even
produce a humanitarian nightmare.&rdquot;—John Mearsheimer,
author of The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International
Realities
“This is a tour de force of historical research and argument. With
great subtlety and richness, Nicholas Mulder transforms our
understanding of twentieth-century global and international
history.”—David Edgerton, King’s College London
“Mulder reveals the history of liberalism’s ultimate weapon. An
essential contribution both to scholarship and to the present-day
debate on economic sanctions.”—Adam Tooze, author of Shutdown: How
Covid Shook the World’s Economy
"A fortuitously timed history of the use of economic sanctions
during the interwar period of the 20th century. Their mixed success
cautions against hoping that the West’s sanctions against Russia
can bring about an end to war in Ukraine."—The Economist,
"Best Books of 2022"
*Economist*
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