Globalization Since 1945 Study Pack

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Last updated May 22, 2026

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Globalization Since 1945 Study Guide

Trace the institutional, technological, and economic forces that shaped globalization from the Bretton Woods Conference through the WTO, multinational supply chains, and the digital revolution. This pack covers the uneven outcomes of global market integration — from East Asia's growth to deindustrialization in developed economies — along with resistance movements and debates over whether institutions like the IMF serve all nations equally.

Key Takeaways

  • •After 1945, the Bretton Woods Conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to stabilize currencies and fund reconstruction, laying the institutional foundation for modern economic globalization.
  • •The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), replaced in 1995 by the World Trade Organization (WTO), progressively reduced trade barriers and integrated national economies into a single global trading system.
  • •Multinational corporations expanded production across borders by relocating manufacturing to lower-wage countries, creating global supply chains that linked raw materials, assembly, and consumers across continents.
  • •Technological advances — containerized shipping, satellite communications, and the internet — dramatically cut the cost and time of moving goods, capital, and information internationally.
  • •The end of the Cold War and the opening of China, India, and former Soviet economies after the late 1980s brought billions of new workers and consumers into the global market.
  • •Globalization generated uneven outcomes: rising living standards and poverty reduction in parts of East and Southeast Asia alongside deindustrialization, wage stagnation, and inequality in many developed economies.
  • •Resistance to globalization grew in the form of anti-globalization movements, economic nationalism, and debates over whether international institutions serve wealthy nations at the expense of developing ones.

Building the Post-War International Economic Order

The architecture of modern globalization was deliberately constructed in the final years of World War II, when Allied powers recognized that the economic nationalism of the 1930s — characterized by high tariffs, competitive currency devaluations, and trade wars — had deepened the Great Depression and contributed to the conditions that produced the war.

The Bretton Woods Conference (1944)

  • •Forty-four nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in July 1944 to design a new global monetary system intended to prevent the instability that had plagued the interwar period.
  • •The conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stabilize exchange rates and provide emergency loans to countries facing balance-of-payments crises.
  • •The World Bank was created to provide long-term financing for reconstruction in war-damaged Europe and development in poorer nations.
  • •The Bretton Woods system pegged most currencies to the U.S. dollar, which was itself convertible to gold at $35 per ounce, giving the United States a central role in global finance.

The Dollar Standard and Its Collapse

  • •The fixed exchange rate system functioned well through the 1950s and 1960s but came under pressure as U.S. spending on the Vietnam War and domestic programs created large deficits.
  • •President Nixon suspended dollar-gold convertibility in 1971 — an event called the Nixon Shock — effectively ending the Bretton Woods fixed-rate system and transitioning the world to floating exchange rates.
  • •Floating exchange rates introduced new volatility but also gave the IMF an expanded role in managing currency crises, particularly in developing nations during the debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s.

GATT and the World Trade Organization

  • •The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed in 1947 by 23 countries, committed signatories to reducing tariffs and eliminating import quotas through successive rounds of multilateral negotiation.
  • •Eight major negotiating rounds between 1947 and 1994 — including the Kennedy Round (1967) and the Uruguay Round (1986–1994) — cut average industrial tariffs in wealthy nations from around 40% after WWII to under 5% by the 1990s.
  • •The Uruguay Round created the World Trade Organization in 1995, replacing GATT with a permanent institution that had binding dispute-resolution authority, covering goods, services, and intellectual property.

Technology and Infrastructure Enabling Global Integration

Institutional agreements could reduce legal barriers to trade, but the physical and digital infrastructure that made moving goods, money, and information across the planet fast and cheap was equally essential to globalization's acceleration.

Containerization and Shipping Logistics

  • •American trucking entrepreneur Malcolm McLean pioneered the standardized intermodal shipping container in the 1950s, making it possible to transfer cargo directly from ships to trains to trucks without reloading — slashing port labor costs by over 95%.
  • •The cost of ocean shipping per ton fell dramatically between the 1960s and 1990s, making it economically rational to manufacture goods thousands of miles from end consumers.
  • •Major container ports — Rotterdam, Shanghai, Singapore, Los Angeles — became nodes in global supply chains, handling millions of standardized containers per year.

Communications Technology and the Internet

  • •Satellite communications technology in the 1960s and 1970s allowed near-instantaneous transmission of financial data and business communications across continents, enabling real-time global currency and stock markets.
  • •The commercialization of the internet in the 1990s allowed firms to coordinate global supply chains, outsource services like customer support and software development, and reach consumers directly across national borders.
  • •The rise of e-commerce platforms and digital financial systems in the 2000s and 2010s further reduced the cost of cross-border transactions, particularly for small and medium enterprises.

Air Travel and Idea Exchange

  • •Expansion of commercial aviation after 1945, and the introduction of wide-body jets like the Boeing 747 in 1969, made international business travel, tourism, and migration dramatically more accessible.
  • •The movement of skilled professionals, students, and migrants accelerated the transfer of knowledge, practices, and cultural products across national boundaries.

About this Study Pack

Created by Kibin to help students review key concepts, prepare for exams, and study more effectively. This Study Pack was checked for accuracy and curriculum alignment using authoritative educational sources. See sources below.

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