The Great Depression

619 Words2 Pages

The Great Depression of the 1930s is a period of time that was highly influenced by social memory, in that the social status you had, your gender, occupation, etc meant that you experienced the Depression differently from the next person, your account was influenced by your social groups/status. It is generally acknowledged that the Great Depression was a period of immense suffering for most. Hence the name given to the period. However, for some, the Great Depression is seen as a time in history where many prospered, and some even see a boom in the economy. The three accounts "Age of Extremes ch3", "The Dawn of Affluence, Reading 13" and "Coping: Middle- and Upper-Class Women. Reading 14" all illustrate different points of view on the Great Depression.

Chapter 3 in The Age of Extremes by Eric Hobsbawm discusses the lead up to the Great Depression, firstly putting forward the idea that the Depression might not have happened if the First World War had have happened in an "otherwise stable economy and civilization." Hobsbawm talks about how the economy before the Great Depression went through ups and downs that were "accepted by businessmen and economists rather as farmers accept the weather..." and he says that these ups and downs were both positive and negative to growth, but on a whole, the economy grew very well. He goes on to say that though the world economy did continue to grow, and to an outsider, like a "Martian", the rise and fall of the economy, would have appeared to be growing during the Great Depression, but in fact the economy was only growing at half the rate of the previous years. He talks about why the Depression happened "Why did the capitalist economy between the wars fail to work?" and what was the result of it, in particular the political ideals that came out of it. "The Great Slump confirmed...in the belief that something was fundamentally wrong with the world they lived in"

In the "Dawn of Affluence" J. Stevenson and C.Cook discuss the effect of the Great Depression on the world economy, in particular, the British economy. They start the account by contradicting the long held view of many, that the Depression was a time ."..of unrelieved economic disaster." Through-out their account, they point out many facts and figures that support their view, either neutral or positive growth figures, e.

More about The Great Depression

Open Document