Historical essay dealing with the relevant changes in the world economy, from the belle époque to Bretton Woods, emphasizing elements of continuity and its ruptures and discontinuities, in trade, finance as well as in institutional aspects. Among the continuities, appears the resilience of a core group of advanced economies, which is able to draft and define the international policy agenda, and the importance of the industrial and technological capabilities to support any exercise of strategic and military projection by those big powers; among the discontinuities is the failure of some emerging powers, namely Germany and Japan, in their challenging of this world order by means of an imperial-like power projection outside of the core group of market economies aiming to create a global interdependence based on democratic and liberal principles. Another emerging power during that period, Soviet Union, was essentially economically irrelevant and was not able to project its own power before the end of the World War II.
international trade; inter-war period; world finance; global wars; structural changes; world economic order