As we have seen, the Industrial Revolution was the beginning of modern globalization. Because of this, roads, machinery and railways have made the world smaller. Entire countries sold their goods on a scale never seen before. Credit, through banks, made international transactions possible and, at the same time, the world became more interdependent. This was the era of what some have called the first truly capitalist era of globalization, which saw intensified integration and interdependence between societies. But despite the economic boom, not everyone was euphoric about inequality. Large surpluses were produced, but these were distributed very unevenly within societies and between societies. There was fear that some of these economic crises could produce political crises. John Maynard Keynes was concerned about the precarious nature of things. On the eve of July 28, 1914, when the First World War began, there was temper, disenchantment and some historians argue, the First World War put an end to this era of prosperity that brought down the first capitalist globalization. But this did not destroy a world that some might nostalgically regard as the pinnacle of civilization. It was a situation in the making for some time, already tormented by anxieties, plagued by rivalries between regimes. Nothing had prepared the world for what it would experience starting in the summer of 1914. This was the first truly global conflict in a century into which the world had fallen since the Napoleonic Wars with the invasion of Egypt. From India to Argentina the world had been swept by a single fire. This war that started in Europe became global because it was a conflict between global empires, locked in a fratricidal conflict with each other, which was about to end... middle of paper... it was rampant. The British economy of 1919 was not even close to that of 1900, it could not support the gold standard. But in the 1920s there was a boom. From 1922 to 1927 the value of gross foreign assets held by Americans, especially in Europe, increased by 400%. By 1928 the United States had been lending a billion a year, and the largest borrower was Germany. But this house of cards began to collapse. There were two important factors that brought down the previous globalization system. Capital soon began to flow into the United States, which then revealed the abyss for the rest of the world which was accumulating large deficits. German and Austrian banks began to collapse and then came the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which made matters worse as they were dependent on the United States as a lender. All this began the process that brought the financial system to its knees.