War chemicals: U.S. economic nationalism and the cyanide trade, 1914–1919

Between 1914 and 1919, war-time responses to short-term economic crises included many of the common markers of economic nationalism: state intervention, import substitution, restriction of foreign investment, and general strengthening of national economic sovereignty. We examine the strategies adopted by US firms, on both the demand and supply side of the global cyanide market, and the efforts of the U.S. government to protect domestic supplies and to instigate the ‘on-shoring’ of cyanide production. We argue that, while US firms succeeded in developing substantial scientific, technical, and import-substituting capacities in the years during and after the First World War, success in the domestic production of critical cyanide compounds proved far more elusive. Still, after a series of challenges during the war years, this paper shows how war-time policies served to re-structure long term supply and demand conditions, resulting in the reconfiguration of national and regional cyanide markets.