The Great Depression proved we need government in a crisis

The current coronavirus crisis is drawing attention to the downsides of living in a hyper-globalized world, says historian David M. Kennedy.

Similarly, the Great Depression revealed the precarity of life for many individuals and the massive risk underpinning many economic sectors and institutions.

As the world reckons with an economic crisis that the International Monetary Fund anticipates to be the worst recession since the Great Depression, what can we learn from history? How are these two events similar, and how are they different?

Kennedy, professor of history, emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and the founder and former director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. In 2000, he received the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Here, Kennedy reflects on these two catastrophic events and how transformative the Great Depression was in American history, demonstrating the invaluable role of government in managing and mitigating disaster:

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