Who produced the key matters of the world after World War I, in a 1927 graphics

The end of the Great War He left a totally devastated Europe. France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany lost between 25% and 30% of their national wealth and basic agricultural and industrial infrastructure was very damaged. After a first period of recovery just after the end of the war, there was a situation of hyperinflation, monetary depreciation, debt payments to an US that claimed his money and a break in international trade.

However, in mid -1920, an economic recovery was lived, and a series of graphics published in 1927 reflects that moment of fleeting splendor just before the Great Depression and of the Second World War. And why not say it, they were a valuable tool if someone with expansionist ideas He threw the glove.

Happy twenty years. After the World War IUSA lent money to France and the United Kingdom to rebuild. Germany was punished He pays a rate to those same countries, but when the US claimed the money, the system broke. Germany had no money and France and the United Kingdom needed German funds to pay Americans. However, the Dawes Plan To give a respite to the German economy, so everyone’s debt relaxed and began the “happy twenties.”

It was an economic recovery period in which the countries involved reached some stability and, above all, an industrial rebirth. It continued depending on American money and we already know how the decade ended with the breakage of the stock market, but at least allowed European nations to be repurchased in a way.

Hickmann Atlas. No levels prior to the Great War were reached, but at least the production and export of raw materials resumed. Beyond Europe, there were many other countries that had been oblivious to the conflict and followed their own path. In 1927, the Austrian publishing house G. Freytag & Berndt published the universal geographical and statistical Atlas of Hickmann.

It is a very interesting document because it reflects that panorama of the mid -20s and offers many, many statistics, graphs and maps that are a reflection of the economic and productive state worldwide. We can consult the 80 pages on the web David Rumsey Map Collectionbut from Visual Capitalist They have compiled the most interesting maps in terms of production and raw materials.

Land use. The pages dedicated to ‘Produktion’ show precisely that: the most powerful countries in certain types of interesting resources at the time. The first cover the use of the Earth and the graph is divided into:

• Acherland: Cultivation lands or farmland.
• Wald: forest.
• Wieen und Weiden: Praderas and grasslands.
• Unproduktivland: unproductive land.

There are countries like Spain that are very balanced, with large cultivation surfaces and practically identical proportions of the rest, but also striking cases. For example, according to this Atlas, France is the country that, with 56%, more arable land has. They captured that Finland had the largest amount of forests, covering 61% of their territory (in 2021 estimated That was more than 73% and British India was the one that had the most won, followed by the US. And the worst? Norway, with 70% unproductive land.

Agricultural production. In Produktion III and IV they focused on land production, and for the Austrians, the US was an agricultural power plant. They were the ones that most wheat, barley, oatmeal and corn produced (by far). The Soviet Union led in Centeno and Germany, obvious, in potato production. Argentina was the second in production of corn and Spain the third in barley.

Who had less grain, mattered. Whose? From Argentina, Canada, the United States and Australia, and the great importing countries were the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. As for wine, France was the spearhead, followed by Italy and Spain. In beer, the United Kingdom marked the pattern, followed by Germany. In that graph, Spain does not appear.

In other resources such as Café, Brazil is a lot of difference from Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela or Guatemala. And China also makes an appearance as a power in the production of tea and rice.

Textiles and natural resources. As for textiles, it depends a lot on it. The United States led cotton production, followed by the British and China Indies. Japan and China were silk powers; The Soviet Union and the Philippines were of the hemp culture; The USSR and Poland led the linen, and the hops was a thing of Great Britain and the United States.

The oil is a barbarity and, perhaps, the fact that puts us most into perspective with what they thought a century ago. In the Atlas, they indicate that the United States produced about 753,000 barrels in 1923. One hundred years later, US production was 21.4 million barrels … a day during the last quarter of 2023.

In tobacco, salt, oil, rubber or paper, Spain has little to say, but where it stands out is in Mercury, very close to Italy and a lot of distance from the United States or Mexico.

Mining. Produktion VII and VIII reflects the production of metals, gems and minerals, with South Africa leading the production of gold and diamonds and Mexico that of silver. The United Kingdom had the leadership of gas, but the absolute protagonist in the Serurgy after World War I, and something that would be key to the second, was the United States, leading coal, iron and steel.

Cataclysm. The photo for some countries was really hopeful, but only two years after the publication of Hickmann Atlas produced The collapse of the NYSE. This caused the bankruptcy of banks, a reduction in production, protectionist measures and a break in international trade. The US was no longer to lend money to anyone, which caused a worldwide deflation.

Europe, which was already indebted to the eyebrows, also suffered this recession, devaluing its coins and causing a new crisis. If a new volume of Hickmann’s work had been published years after the great depression, the situation of the graphics would have been very different.

There were some visual and statistical documentation projects immediately after, but none as complete as we have discussed in this article.

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