This volume concentrates on the role of developing nations in the 50 years preceding the first world war. These regions, it argues, were instrumental in the evolution of the world economy. Indeed it could not have evolved in the manner that it did without them. Latham points to the fact that the so-called free-trade era was unsustainable without the developing countries, without which Europe and America would have had to make fundamental readjustments. This book was first published in 1978.