Chris Meissner has written an optimistic, nuanced, and comprehensive overview of the history of globalization. It presents globalization as an expression of humans’ natural tendency to cooperate and a framework to address past and future challenges. However, Meissner also stresses that commodity, capital, and labor market integration are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for sustained economic development, and that globalization brings inherent risks, inequalities, and interdependencies.

One from the Many opens with a brief introduction and a discussion of markets since the Neolithic Revolution, before examining the integration and development of the global economy from 1820 onward. There are five chapters on the nineteenth century, two on the interwar period, three on post-war reintegration and Bretton Woods, and two on the globalization wave since the 1970s. Trade and capital markets get especially broad coverage, but migration is treated as well, especially for the nineteenth century.

The narrative is theory-guided, but not overly rigid. Meissner provides informed, well-structured insights into all key topics. Well-chosen examples from different contexts make macro-historical trends tangible. For the first globalization, he largely follows the Heckscher-Ohlin framework established by Jeffrey Williamson, Kevin O’Rourke, Alan Taylor, Timothy Hatton, and others in the 1990s and early 2000s. He takes involuntary trade and migration on board, that is, slavery, colonialism, and their legacies. Dissidents like Friedrich List also have their voices heard. For the interwar period, the dysfunctional reconstruction and lack of cooperation with suboptimal economic and political results take center stage, following Barry Eichengreen, Peter Temin, and others. Meissner stresses the importance of institutions for international integration also in his analysis of the Bretton Woods period and its remarkable convergence experience. Finally, he highlights that fast industrialization in East Asia reshaped specialization patterns and deepened global market integration, but also brought about the China Shock and recent supply chain disruptions.

The chapters on international capital markets warrant special attention, since here the institutional nature of market integration is most prominent. The treatments of the rather complicated workings of the classical gold standard and the Bretton Woods system are didactically excellent, containing original graphs on current account imbalances, exchange rate regimes, and capital controls that already made it into my teaching materials. One key takeaway regarding exchange rate regimes is that fixed exchange rates and pegs promise stability, yet often lead to crises, when originally self-stabilizing speculation turns into capital flight. This holds true under the gold standard, the frequently delayed peg adjustments of the Bretton Woods era, and the policies of the 1990s.

Most intriguingly, Meissner repeatedly voices surprise at our limited empirical understanding of the growth implications of financial market integration in history. The Lucas paradox is one of the first theoretical insights introduced in the book: Capital moves to the most capital-scarce places much less than a Heckscher-Ohlin framework would predict (p. 56). On the classical gold standard period, the conclusion states that it is unlikely that the costs of increased interdependence outweigh the benefits of integration, but that actually “no one has attempted to quantify the issue” (p. 96). The chapter on Bretton Woods mentions the virtual absence of banking crises during that period due to domestic financial market regulation and international capital controls (p. 223), although there were exchange rate crises instead. These, however, seem to have been short-lived periods of delayed adjustments, about whose macroeconomic costs we know as little as about the costs of capital controls during a period of strong catch-up growth.

There is also a surprising scarcity of empirical evidence on the positive effects of capital flows after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system; Moritz Schularick and Thomas Steger found little correlation between capital inflows and domestic investment (p. 235). Meissner mentions unaccountable rulers’ Swiss bank accounts and domestic cronyism, corruption, and inefficient residential investment as potential reasons. Capital has been flowing into and out of countries with unresilient financial systems (p. 258), and financial actors are seldom interested in internalizing the potential socioeconomic costs of their actions (p. 249). And China experienced remarkable growth despite continued capital controls (p. 272). Similarly, with movement for poor country debt relief, simultaneously commercial litigation against foreign governments increased (pp. 255–8).

This collection of notes is not meant to summarize Meissner’s view on international investments. It intends to illustrate that the book enables our understanding of global capital markets, shortcomings, and risks included. Human cooperation is sometimes unequal and information and power asymmetries are abundant. But, as Meissner concludes, it is nevertheless unavoidable and makes a net positive impact. Trade and factor market integration might not be directly responsible for most of the gains in efficiency and productivity experienced since 1820, but they facilitated them, and their absence rarely brought better outcomes. While these conclusions are hardly surprising, the book’s contribution lies in the insights and understanding that the reader acquires on the way.

As usual, there is also something to criticize: Chapter 7 is somewhat less coherent than other chapters when trying to discuss different drivers of globalization backlash. Many sections have few citations, which benefits the narrative flow, but requires additional literature searches when using the book as a research overview. And in the discussion on the China Shock (p. 293), Meissner usefully cites Robert Feenstra and Akira Sasahara’s more global work but seems to assume that the original contributions by David Autor and co-authors are so familiar to the reader that they require no reference.

However, this hardly diminishes the achievement of having written a comprehensive, well-structured, highly readable, and nuanced account of globalization that will find a prominent place on any syllabus and reading list on the topic.