 But tonight's event co-hosted by the Center for Grand Strategy and the Sir Michael Howard Center for the History of War. It's my great pleasure to welcome Professor Francine McKenzie, who's the chair of the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario. As Francine was reminding me, we first met back at the University of Toronto for in an MA seminar back in 1989, 90, I think. And of course, she went on to figure and better things, including a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her specialism is the international history of international organizations, 20th century global trade, the British Commonwealth, and Canada's engagement with the world. I'm not going to embarrass her by reading through all of her very long list of impressive publications. We're here tonight to celebrate the launch of her new book, GATT and Global Order in the Post-War Era, just published last March by Cambridge University Press. And it explores the role of the GATT in the making of the post-war international order. And that's all I'm going to say for now. We're going to, Francine will speak for about 40, 45 minutes. And then we will ask for a Q&A. So thank you very much and welcome, Francine. Thanks very much. Let me begin by thanking Andrew Earhart and Joe Mayolo for the invitation to speak about my book today. And I also want to thank the Center for Grand Strategy and the Sir Michael Howard Center for the History of War for hosting this event. And thank you to all of you for making time to come to this event today. I'm just going to take a minute to share my screen. Let's see how this goes. And I am almost set. Looks good. Looks good. OK, I'll just set my clock going so that I don't talk for too long. OK. So GATT and Global Order in the Post-War Era is an institutional and international history of the general agreement on tariffs and trade from just after the Second World War when it was set up over a roughly 50-year period until the mid-1990s when it was absorbed into the World Trade Organization. Now there is an extensive literature on the general agreement on tariffs and trade. It's written by political scientists, economists, legal scholars, some historians, trade officials, and activists, amongst others. And despite this extensive literature, indeed, probably because of this extensive literature, I found that the more I read, the more I had some very basic questions that were not completely answered. And one of my questions, and it's about as basic as you get, is what was the GATT? Now in the literature on GATT, there are many different definitions that are used to describe it or define it. It's been called a regime, a contract, an intergovernmental treaty, a body of law, a club, a forum, and a consumers union. And they're all apt. There are also many characterizations of the GATT. It's described as accidental, apolitical, technical, obscure, informal, and ineffective. Adding to the range of options about how to think about the GATT, there have been contradictions in the assessment of what it did and how effectively it did it. The GATT has had many critics throughout its history. It's been criticized for being an instrument of American imperialism, for supporting the dominance of large corporations. It's been seen as an enemy of the environment, as a leveling globalizing force that has erased local cultures and eradicated national distinctiveness. It's been seen as the cause for individual suffering, for unemployment. And there you see an image of GATT as GATT zillion, as kind of rapacious, destructive mode. But others have acknowledged the GATT as a great success, as an organization, and in terms of advancing the project of liberalizing global trade. Indeed, some have defined it or described it as one of the most successful international organizations ever. And yet there are also repudiations of the GATT and its relevance to the state of the global economy and global trade. Probably my favorite dismissal of the GATT comes from the storied political scientist, Susan Strange, who talked about the GATT's irrelevance to understanding the growth of global trade. And she said, no one in the world of commerce would notice if GATT was swallowed up by lack of man. More recently, scholars like Kim have concluded that the GATT actually only benefited a small handful of its members. Or someone like Doug Irwin in his recent terrific history of American trade policy clashing over commerce has shown that American tariffs, and he's actually looking at a specific, or this remark I'm about to make is about a specific 20-year period from 1945 on. But he noticed that he argued that the American tariffs dropped more because of inflation rather than negotiations. All of which cast doubt on how effective or what kind of contribution GATT actually made to opening global markets and increasing the exchange of goods globally. So I was left with these basic questions after all of this kind of literature and different ways of thinking about GATT. Again, all of them I think are apt. They're not all necessarily inconsistent, but they didn't clarify for me how to think about the organization. So I left with what was GATT. What did it do and what does its history tell us? And I answered these questions in my book by situating the GATT centrally in the history of international relations after 1945. In other words, politics was central to my answer. Now, I am hardly the first person to connect international trade and global politics. And I put on the slide a couple of quotations that go back, in one case, almost 50 years, of distinguished scholars who have made this argument. For instance, Richard Cooper in 1973 wrote trade policy is foreign policy. And in that article, he suggested that war and perhaps migration along with trade are the most important aspects of relations between countries. Or Robert Gilpin in his study of international political economy noted that trade along with war has been central to the evolution of international relations. But it seems to me that the studies of GATT and the scholarship on GATT have become decoupled from international relations and global politics. Indeed, GATT is often characterized as apolitical, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago. For instance, one group of scholars describe GATT's history as, quote, politically uneventful. And another scholar who's written about GATT has suggested that it was politically uneventful because GATT members and the secretariat, as she put it, carefully avoided politics in GATT. And this depoliticization of GATT has been usually upheld as a virtue. It's a good thing because it allows technical experts and trade officials to focus on the very difficult task of negotiating trade and reducing the barriers to trade. And it doesn't complicate this process or distort it or derail it by adding in different kinds of political goals or objectives or considerations. Now, if you look at any of the GATT records from minutes of council meetings or to reports of working groups, you'll note that political considerations are rarely acknowledged openly. So perhaps another reason to think that the GATT's history is one that isn't particularly relevant to politics. I think also that the literature on GATT tends to focus on rounds of trade negotiations. And this has affected the way we think about the organization. And certainly trade negotiations were the bread and butter of GATT. There were eight rounds of negotiations held between 1947 and 1994. They were ever more complicated. They took ever longer to complete. And the histories that look at these are the accounts, the scholarly accounts, not just the histories, but all the different academics who are working on these rounds of trade negotiations. When they look at the negotiations, they portray the GATT as a technical space or a space that's narrowly focused on certain kinds of questions and that's dominated by technical officials. One of the implications of a kind of technocratic and narrowly economic understanding of GATT is that it has implications for how we think of it in relation to politics and the global governance system. And one is that it's positioned on the margins of the global governance system. And the assumption is that major developments in international relations or crises or changes that the GATT was untouched by them as well as irrelevant to them. So when I first began presenting my work on this project, which was many years ago, I affirmed that politics was the appropriate lens through which to examine GATT in global trade or at least it was an appropriate lens through which to examine and explain GATT in global trade. And at the time this was obvious to me that there were certain obvious ways in which trade and politics connected. For instance, there could be a tension between domestic interests and international negotiations linked to trade in the context of GATT. And if there were tensions between them, their resolution could spill out and have consequences domestically. And it might affect things like elections and how people vote as we see today. Or the resolution internationally might have implications for foreign relations again, as we see today. Or it was evident to me that the way in which trade was being pursued within the context of GATT that trade could be used by some GATT members more than others, but nonetheless by many GATT members as a way of achieving diplomatic or geopolitical goals or objectives. So it played an instrumental purpose in foreign policy. But the longer I worked on this project, the more I began to see other layers of political meaning and significance. And what I've tried to make clear in my study of GATT in global order is that the history of GATT reveals a lot about the nature, dynamics, and drivers of global order since 1945. And that's gonna be the focus of my remarks today. Now in my book, there are four principle case studies, the Cold War, regionalism, development, and agriculture. And I chose them because they were all important challenges to GATT throughout its history. But I also think they're really important ways to think about post 1945 international relations. All right, so I'm gonna talk about for the rest of my time is how the history of GATT and the relationship between trade and politics played out in a way that tells us something about global order. And I'm gonna do this by looking at six different areas of trade and politics. So one is trade and peace, American hegemony, ideology, regionalism, anti-imperialism, and how we think of GATT as an international actor. So let's begin with trade and peace. The general agreement on tariffs in trade emerged out of a World War II project to create a new global governance system. And the ultimate goal of the GATT was not just to liberalize trade and to make it more accessible, but it was to prevent war and promote peace. In the thinking of the time, and this is thinking that is reaffirmed constantly, or has been reaffirmed throughout GATT's history and we hear it today as well, peace and prosperity were linked and war and deprivation were seen as mutually reinforcing. And trade could be part of either one of these equations. So as the thinking went in the 1940s, there was a sense that trade could be, could cause conditions of hardship or deprivation within countries. And this could be a source of unrest, which could spill over beyond national borders, or that trade could create tensions and rivalries between countries that were better off or less well off, between were often described as have and have not nations. The flip side of this thinking was that trade could help raise standards of living that would improve conditions of life and make people more contented with their lot and therefore less likely to behave in ways that might be politically destabilizing or dangerous. Now the association between trade and peace has been invoked throughout GATT's history. In 1948, the first executive secretary of GATT, man named Eric Wyndham White, made this connection clear and he repeated it many other times. But he said that without trade being used to promote prosperity, there would be quote, no hope of attaining the prize of enduring peace. Flash forward 50 years, 1998, by which time the GATT was part of the WTO and Renato Vieiro, the head of the WTO, praised the GATT and the WTO, this multilateral system generally, for being quote, a force not only for economic growth, but also for more stable and cooperative international relations. And then this past summer, the deputy director general of the WTO gave a speech in which he asked, is there a causal relationship between trade and peace? And he went on in his speech to explain some of the ways in which trade has supported peace. For instance, by encouraging cooperative relations between states or creating conditions of greater stability within states. And he concluded that quote, trade for peace is more than a slogan. It is the hope for a better future. This connection that's made between trade and peace, and I suppose the flip side trade and war, is quite different from the work done by some scholars who try to examine whether or not the existence of commercial exchange or trade relations between states makes them more or less likely to go to war. The GATT in its existence, generated many studies and more statistics than anyone could possibly absorb about trade. And it never tried, at least in the documents that I have come across, it never tried to make this claim that the GATT actually made relations more peaceful between states or let more cooperative and less combative. Indeed, anyone who spent any time looking at GATT records will see that the pursuit of trade liberalization, in fact, provoked conflict all the time. Their records are filled with acrimony and disagreements and walking out and accusations and recriminations. It's not a purely peaceful process to bring about trade liberalization. But I think the connection between trade and peace is important, and this is why it's repeated so often in the context of GATT, for what it signals. And despite the fact there are many critics of GATT and many who doubt the logic of the trade and peace or the peace and prosperity connection, what membership in GATT and adhering to or accepting this logic that trade signaled a commitment to peace. It also signaled a commitment to working in multilateral forums, to respect for rules, even though those rules were often broken. It signaled a willingness to restrain the pursuit of national interests and to curb the projection of power. And it signals a belief in a commitment to work towards a common goal. The fact that GATT officials frequently repeated this refrain and made the connection between trade and peace and the world without GATT is one which was much more likely to resemble the 1930s. I always talked about the 1930s. I think also was part of the public relations activities of GATT and GATT as an international actor about which I'll say a little bit more in a few minutes. So that's trade and peace. All right. Then there's American hegemony. Many, many scholars have asserted that American hegemony was the main factor behind the creation of the GATT and the liberal trade system, if not the entire post-war global order, and was the essential factor in sustaining GATT and the liberal trade system. And there are more scholars who asserted this than I can quote right now. In GATT and global order, I actually set aside the idea of American hegemony or the Pax Americana. And this is probably the most revisionist position that I take in my book. I acknowledge the importance of American involvement to GATT from its creation throughout its 50 year history. But my reading of the history suggests to me that other members of GATT always mattered to the organization and that the American experience in GATT didn't define everyone else's experience nor did it define the organization's history and evolution. If we go back to the creation of the general agreement, which came out, which was finalized in 1947, I see many different countries putting their impress on that document. For instance, there's a provision in the general agreement about full employment. And the idea that full employment and trade were linked in a very specific way. In fact, the full employment measures had to be supported first and that would kickstart the growth of global trade. That was a position that the American officials involved in setting up the GATT didn't particularly share, but it was strongly advocated by the British and Australian governments. And so it got into the general agreement. Or the general agreement included provisions to protect infant industries in developing countries. And this was included largely because representatives of countries like India, which were involved in this process, insisted that they had to be able to have measures that would allow them to withstand some of the harshest forces of competition initially anyway, so they could build up their industrial base. The American officials strongly objected to the use of protectionist measures to develop industrial infrastructures and activities of developing countries. And they criticized, and I quote, crazy people with India the wildest of the lot, Brazil and Chile utterly irresponsible, China and Lebanon tagging along. But American officials also acknowledged that they had to make concessions to countries like India and Chile and Brazil in order for them to participate in the organization, as one American official wrote, if we do not do this, I'm afraid our whole program is lost. In other words, multilateral buy-in was absolutely crucial for the GATT and American officials worked in ways to bring about that far-reaching support. So we don't see American unilateralism or an imposition of its will, but rather a kind of exchange and accommodation which brought about this far-reaching multilateral support. In my study, what I think is more productive for me to look at is American leadership and not assuming that that is a hegemonic leadership. And to examine how American leadership was discharged and there are various ways in which American leadership demonstrated itself in the context of GATT. On the one hand, there was a reluctance to act as a leader within the GATT. For instance, an American is never headed or never headed the organization and American officials didn't typically put themselves forward to play prominent parts or to chair working groups or committees within GATT in part because if they put themselves forward, it was likely to provoke opposition to their role. American leadership was also absent and restrained on many issues of critical importance to other GATT members as well as to the GATT secretariat or the organization itself. And I'll give you one example. When it came to the creation of the European Economic Community in the 1950s, many GATT members and the GATT secretariat were alarmed by this development. Well, it might be welcome in some ways. There was concern that it would promote discrimination. It would raise tariff barriers in particular that it might lead to widespread agricultural protectionism. Now, as you probably know, the United States wanted and supported European integration for many reasons, including geopolitical reasons linked to the Cold War. And so within the context of GATT, as the Treaty of Rome, which led to the creation of the European Economic Community was being debated and considered, the Americans were absolutely silent about it, even though there were elements of the Treaty of Rome which troubled them as well. And in part, because the Americans wanted European integration to be successful, they had forsaken any kind of leverage they might have had over their European allies. Eric Wyndham-White, her colleague was the first secretary or executive secretary of the GATT. Eric Wyndham-White thought the Americans when it came to dealing with the EEC war, quote, weak and inept. And American officials themselves recognized that once the EEC had been created, and then when it began to figure out how it would work as a collective force within GATT, that they recognized that they were no longer, quote, the sole dominant economic power. So there wasn't a single head jam on. American leadership also experienced considerable opposition throughout GATT's history. I'll give you just a couple of examples. In the 1960s, there was a lively debate in GATT about the use of preferential tariffs to support economic development. And this was a really hot issue in the 1960s. In GATT, as well as in larger global discussions about trade and development. And the Americans in the European government staunchly, adamantly were opposed to the use of preferential tariffs or any preferential devices to support economic development in this way. And the issue was not that they didn't support development, they didn't support the use of preferential devices in this way. But in 1965, an Australian official requested a waiver from the GATT to permission to deviate from the rules so that they could grant preferences on 60 categories of goods from developing countries. And they would affect things like chewing gum, musical instruments and cricket bats. The volume of trade, despite I'm sure the great interest in Australia for things like cricket bats and chewing gum, the volume of trade was expected to be quite small. But the principle was really important. And the principle was being affirmed because the United States had blocked any developments, any progress in the use of preferential devices to support development before. When Australia put forward then its request for a waiver, the Americans strongly objected. But the Australian government received its waiver by a vote of 51 in favor and one opposed. Or roughly about the same time, Australia and New Zealand concluded a regional trade agreement in the 1960s. And at this point, the United States was also fairly concerned about the proliferation, pardon me, of regional trade agreements. And they said they didn't want any quote GATT sanction or any GATT cover whatsoever for this agreement. They saw it as kind of not fulfilling the basic criteria of regional trade agreements. But they couldn't stop its introduction and it happened anyway. So what the history of GATT has shown me is that many countries stepped up to lead in the organization at different times and on different issues. It could be Canada and France when it came to the creation of the World Trade Organization or Australia and the Karen's group who took the lead with trying to bring about the liberalization of trade and agriculture. Japan stepped up to combat the proliferation of regional trade agreements. And India, Nigeria and Brazil were staunchly in the vanguard of trying to make GATT better serve the cause of economic development. Leadership in GATT was fluid and it was opportunistic. And I think it's better to think of the GATT not as a one person show, but as an ensemble. GATT's legitimacy was strengthened by far reaching engagement and support by having many leaders in GATT. And I think today we see how important that is to the WTO. Okay, so that's American engagement. Next I wanna talk about ideology in relation to some fairly broad ideologies of international categories of ideology, internationalism and nationalism. When GATT was set up following the Second World War, support for internationalist thinking was probably at a high point. And there was a widespread belief in thinking about the depression of the 1930s and the Second World War in particular that a liberal trade order was perhaps the only option or at least the default option. But there were also people who doubted the logic and promise of freer trade. There were always counter arguments to the assertion that a liberal trade order and an international organization to support that liberal trade order were in fact the right way to go about managing and organizing global trade. And I've just put on my side a couple of pictures of the ways in which national ideas about trade have been articulated and advanced. And I thought to be very fair minded that I'd put up an example from Canada since this connection between trade and national interests or national agenda is pervasive. It's not particular to one country even if it's often associated with one or a handful of countries. The point here is that when GATT was established it was established in the context of internationalist and nationalist ideologies and worldviews that were intersecting or interlocked. They were in other words entangled or the GATT was entangled in an internationalist nationalist order. And this is a point that's been made by other international historians who've looked at the UN system. For instance, Glenda Sluga and Sunil Amroth have made this point as has Mark Mazzauer. But it means that in trying to understand what the global order was we have to look at these different layers or conceptions or elements of global order that existed simultaneously. So on the one hand we see a global order an internationalist global order that emphasized multilateral forums and rules that strove towards cooperation that required temperate sovereignty and work towards collective wellbeing. We also see understandings of global order in which nations were the principal actors and the pursuit of power and national interests for the driving imperatives. And these visions or these conceptions were not necessarily incompatible but there are obviously tensions that could and did arise between them. Now I don't wanna suggest that this internationalist nationalist way of thinking about global order that it's mutually exclusive or that one is good and one is bad or one is altruistic and one is self-interested or that people or governments found themselves supporting one or the other. I think in fact the truth is much messier. There's lots of overlap between them and they're all existing simultaneously. And as I said, they do at times create tensions and both were certainly impressed on the GATT and how it functioned as well as the global context in which it was situated. And that meant that for the GATT to work to do its work well, it had to serve the interests of its nation state members and it had to work for the collective good. And its challenge was to try to achieve both which it did through a variety of means including compromise and give and take, quiet or sometimes more public pressure, interventions, hard headed negotiations. There were a variety of tactics that they could use to try to achieve both those ends. And the organization itself always upheld the logic of internationalism with respect to trade but they also had to acknowledge the fundamental importance of national bottom lines. Conversely, the nation state members of GATT had to be mindful of their commitments to the organization but they also recognize that they weren't sacrificing their own national interests for the common good. So the history of GATT shows that the global order is not just about the pursuit of power or the pursuit of cooperation but it's about the pursuit of balance in order to uphold a functioning international system. All right, next point. Regionalism or regional alternatives to international organization. This is a theme that I explore in two chapters of my book one on the European community and then another one on regional trade agreements from the late 1960s on. Now the terms of the general agreement permitted regional trade arrangements as long as they were so-called trade creating and they included substantially all trade between the parties. And this actually was pretty vague criteria but despite the fact the general agreement made room for regional trade agreements the secretariat itself, the organization always saw regional agreements as a problem and a threat. One problem with regional trade agreements was that they contradicted the most favored nation principle which was at the center of the liberal trade order. And regional trade agreements are also seen as a rebuke to GATT and there was a sense that the GATT didn't deliver enough and didn't satisfy its members enough and so alternatives had to be found and it was through regional trade arrangements. And it was certainly true that the GATT did not advance the cause of trade liberalization equally for all of its members or for all sectors of global trade. And so these regional arrangements arose in response to some of the limitations of GATT. As the GATT got bigger and as rounds of trade negotiations got ever more complicated regional agreements also proved to be more effective in actually reaching decisions. When the GATT was first organized in 1947 there were 23 members who were present and they focused on reducing barriers to trade. By the time the GATT wrapped up in the mid-90s at the end of the Uruguay round it had 122 members and they tried to negotiate things like subsidies and safeguards and intellectual property reaching agreement was much, much more complicated and the bottom line was in some ways both higher and lower at the same time. So regional agreements might then be able to move forward more quickly in the project of trade liberalization than a more cumbersome and universal GATT could. Nonetheless, the efficacy or the efficiency of regional trade agreements was seen as a challenge and a threat to the organization. And in 1989, a man named Lester Thurow who was the Dean of the Business School at MIT noticed that the emergence of regional trade blocks mega regional trade blocks he put it that focused on the Americas, Europe and Asia meant that the GATT was irrelevant and he pronounced that the GATT was dead in that year. And regional trade agreements also seemed to undermine the authority of the institution. If they didn't make it absolutely obsolete they were challenged to its authority in that regional trade agreements involving GATT members always had to be submitted to the organization for a kind of ill-defined oversight. It wasn't clear what the GATT could actually do about them. If they didn't conform with basic GATT criteria for regional trade agreements. And this process of oversight or vetting the agreements was one where the GATT always had to accept the regional trade agreements and it would uphold or would suggest that it was a flexible accommodating organization as though this was a virtue. But in fact, it showed that GATT rules were being ignored or in some cases flaunted in regional trade agreements which undermined the legitimacy and effectiveness of the organization. And yet the form of going through this process of submitting regional agreements to GATT also on the other hand seem to affirm the legitimacy of the organization in ways I think that Susan Peterson explored so insightfully in her study of the permanent mandates commission of the League of Nations. In that the members of GATT accepted and a kind of an accountability to the organization. And what one person has called at the time the process of the laundering of policy of trade policy is regional agreements in the context of GATT affirm the GATT's normative authority that persisted. So that's regional alternatives to international organization. And it suggests different ways of thinking about the organization of international order, different ways of pursuing interest in international order that both affirmed and I think challenged the existence of these universal organizations like the GATT. All right, the next point I wanna talk about is anti-imperialism in the so-called liberal order. And I wanna discuss this in relation to the theme of development. Now GATT doesn't typically figure prominently in studies of development. Other, perhaps, and as an example of systemic practices or structures that perpetuate disadvantage and inequality. But development has been a critical part of GATT's history. And it's a story of inadequate and grudging actions of insufficient will and commitment, but it's not a story of indifference. And developing countries were present at the creation of GATT. They constituted roughly half the countries that were present when it was set up. And with decolonization, many of these newly independent countries joined GATT and they brought a development agenda to GATT. So from the early 1950s on, there was an active discussion in GATT about the ways in which trade could be used to promote development and to overcome the legacy of imperialism. But the way in which GATT tried to respond or GATT members failed to respond to this imperative also seemed to suggest that GATT was part of an ongoing process of neo-imperialism. And it was frequently criticized or denounced as a rich man's club that privileged developing countries and perpetuated the disadvantages of developing countries. There's a post-colonial critique of the promise of liberalism and of the global order that ran through GATT's history. Now developing countries within GATT lobbied to reform the organization to make it more responsive to the circumstances and goals of developing countries. And they called out double standards that sometimes trade practices would seem to be okay for some members, often industrial members, but not okay for developing country members. To give one example, in the 1950s and 60s developing countries wanted to be able to use something called quantitative restrictions as a way of limiting competition and building up their industries, diversifying their economic activities. There was much opposition mostly from the United States to the use of quantitative restrictions in this way. And developing country representatives to GATT asked why devices that countries that were now industrialized had used and might be 20 years ago or 50 years ago or 100 years ago to make them have these diversified strong economies, why developing countries couldn't use the same devices. Or they asked why waivers, exceptions, deviations from GATT rules were granted to some countries, and typically Western industrial countries, but not others. They pressured the GATT to change the way that trade negotiations were organized so that developing countries could participate more directly and so that the commodities of greatest interest to developing countries would figure in these negotiations and therefore be benefit from the process of opening global trade. And that started to happen in the 1960s, but it didn't always mean that there were results that flowed from that, from those changes, that developing countries began to benefit to the same extent as other participants in GATT from the process of trade liberalization. And this was clear from a comment made by a representative to GATT from Nigeria in the 1970s during the so-called Tokyo round, which lasted most of the 1970s. And there were again promises made at the start of the round that development really would be a priority and they would work hard to ensure that the trade of developing countries did not fall behind or wasn't excluded from these negotiations. And the representative from Nigeria made clear that he doubted this promise having been, had that heard it before and not have it be realized. And he referred to the disappointment that he'd experienced in the Kennedy round when allegedly development was a priority and the results didn't entirely support that. And he said, quote, despite our active participation, we might at the end, and he meant the round in the 1970s, we might at the end be left to pick up the crumbs from the master's table as we did in the Kennedy round, making it very clear in this very powerful language that GATT was associated with new imperialism. Similarly, in the 1970s, an official from Fiji made clear that there were post-colonial expectations of GATT in global order and that the onus rested on developed countries to redress historic economic injustices, to, quote, bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots. Not by giving out gifts, but by creating conditions whereby the have-nots will achieve what is rightfully due to them. Now developing countries in GATT, and this is a sweeping label, but developing countries called for reforms and expected that GATT should work to their benefit. And in doing this and in having this expectation, they were no different from any other member of GATT. But developing countries were characterized at the time and have been talked about in scholarship on GATT in the following way. They've been described as troublemakers, free riders, demonders, and their marginalization within GATT has been explained as a product of their own indifference, or their marginalization is a result of the fact they were ill-suited to the organization and some have claimed that their involvement in the organization in GATT actually weakened it. And I think these kinds of characterizations and criticisms are telling of the ways in which Western views certainly within GATT had been normalized. And they also reveal, I think, the racial prejudice that informed some of those Western views. It was fairly rare that the racial underpinnings of Western norms were revealed openly within GATT. But there was times when it became more obvious than others. And I'll tell you about one example. Again, it's from the 1950s. When developing countries were members of GATT and many of them wanted to be selected to play leadership roles in various GATT meetings. And they wanted this because it was a way of showing that other countries recognized their stature and contributions to the global order and to the GATT in particular. It's also sometimes a way for them to maneuver themselves to be in leadership positions with respect to a, let's call it a developing world constituency. And it also put them in a position to influence the work, the agenda of GATT. There were many credible candidates from developing countries to play some of these roles. And one of the plumb roles was to chair the annual or semiannual meetings of the contracting parties of the members of GATT when they met. And the process to select the chair of the contracting parties in GATT was based on consensus and collegiality, which seemed fair. And in the mid 1950s, there was one person, this man you see figured here, L.K. Jha from India who was a very serious candidate to chair the session of contracting parties. He was widely known in GATT, well respected. He would in fact go on to become the governor of the Bank of India later. One American official praised Jha for quote, thinking like a westerner. But when it was clear that Jha really had no serious contender to chair, to become chair of the contracting parties meeting, there were behind the scenes and efforts made to prevent him from taking on this role. And this was often, you know, American and Canadian and other Western European officials they acted to find an alternative. And they wanted someone who they called was a confirmed GATT man. And they asked a veteran Canadian official to play this role for the sake of GATT's well-being but he turned them down. Next, they wondered if a Belgian candidate might be able to play this role and they could put him forward. But they doubted that if it actually came to a vote he'd be able to defeat Jha. And then they turned to an Australian official with long experience in GATT who they thought could be, as they called it a bridge between North and South but he made himself unavailable for this position. At this time, Jha was not elected but a couple of years later he was elected unanimously to take on this role. Nonetheless, what I think is useful or meaningful telling about this instance is that Jha's candidacy to chair the contracting parties elicited fear on the part of other GATT members. And there was fear that he might destabilize the system or shift it in other directions. And I think this is evidence of what the political scientist Hobson calls subliminal Eurocentric institutional intolerance. I think then when we describe the post-war trade order or the whole global order as liberal as many frequently do, we need to keep in mind that it was also a deeply conservative order that was reluctant or rigid when it came to making changes especially with respect to the inclusion of developing countries. Okay, I want you to keep in mind too that developing countries ended up being some of the strongest supporters of GATT and trade liberalization. And this became very apparent in the 1990s when the Uruguay Round, the last round of negotiations held under the GATT's auspices were dragging to a conclusion. And it actually wasn't clear that they would be able to be concluded successfully because of tensions between the United States and the Western Europeans. And developing country officials all call for a successful round or a successful conclusion to the round. And they explain their position in ways that showed they subscribe to the logic of liberal trade. For instance, the representative from Bangladesh said, success in the Uruguay Round is the surest insurance for us all to sail on the boat of multilateralism to a safe and predictable voyage of liberalizing the global trade system. Or the minister of commerce from India, he also noted the irony that developing countries now endorsed, quote, the logic of competition based on comparative advantage, whereas industrial nations work as he put it, shying away from the playing field and seeking tilt in the rules of the game. So developing countries affirm the relevance and legitimacy of the GATT, an imperfect organization that often ill serve them. All right, last category, GATT as a political actor. So the GATT has often been conceived of or presented as a space or a meeting point where nations send representatives and these actors interact in a space. Or the GATT might be positioned as a referee. And given that there was a very small secretariat which had limited resources within GATT, there was a sense that it wasn't able to do much. I think organizations like GATT and international organizations generally also often position themselves as rising above or being removed from politics. This is a very useful way of positioning themselves. But I think after studying the history of GATT, I see it as a proactive and independent-minded organization. And it was proactive in promoting liberalization, shoring up support for a cause for your trade that was often out of favor and responding or adapting to changes and challenges. The GATT secretariat was always engaged in public relations work to strengthen or preserve this internationalist beliefs on which it depended, like affirming the connection between trade and peace. Or for instance, it tried to convince consumers of the world that they were the main beneficiaries of a liberal trade order. And they always would invoke memories of the depression or conjure up the possibility of war if people departed from or undermined the GATT. The GATT secretariat was also very active in holding itself up to its own standards, one of which was universal relevance and an inclusive membership. So for instance, the GATT secretariat worked behind the scenes to ensure the admission of communist countries to GATT, to support the more meaningful inclusion of development as part of their mandate. Again, that didn't entirely work and nonetheless made efforts to do so. Or later to include agriculture in trade negotiations, more meaningfully, since countries that were exporting agricultural goods were by and large left out of the benefits of GATT. And this GATT secretariat, if it was proactive, it acted out of a commitment to a belief that GATT was a do-gooding organization out of I think a genuine commitment or belief that GATT and liberal trade could promote peace and prosperity. But I think it also acted out of a survival instinct, anything that seemed to threaten the organization. It could be other organizations like UNCTAD or the OECD or regional trade agreements. It was quick to maneuver around or limit its way of impacting GATT or of criticizing these organizations. But if GATT was proactive, it was also very discreet about its influence. It worked often with sympathetic national officials amongst its or across its GATT members or would organize seemingly objective expert panels to produce reports that would justify some kind of action which would support GATT and its activities. And it was clear that within GATT, nation-state still mattered a lot to the organization. Though nation-states joined GATT and seated a small piece of sovereignty to GATT, in no way did they see GATT as a transcendent or parallel authority. They were always mindful of their national sovereignty and their own national imperatives. And GATT could achieve nothing without the support of its members. And it had to be aware then of the limits of how far it could push for fear of triggering a national sovereignty backlash which arose from time to time. So the challenge for GATT and the GATT secretariat was to work with its members who were both its crucial supporters but in some ways its most significant detractors. And it was hard to work with members because their behavior was unpredictable or changing. A GATT member might cheat one day when it came to GATT rules and provisions but the next day it was likely to be a champion of the organization. If the behavior of members within GATT was constantly changing, one constant in the organization or of the organization's history is that the pursuit of trade liberalization was polarizing. The organization inspired strong denunciations and more muted expressions of support. And this was unavoidable given the way the global order after 1945 was set up and the rule of international organizations in that order. The history of GATT, I think shows that organizations like GATT and other international organizations were essential to global order but they were also precarious and their default condition was beleaguered. And GATT and other international organizations like it, despite adopting an apolitical mantle required sensitive political antenna to operate, maneuver and survive something that we see a need for today. And there I will stop. Okay, I'm back. Okay. Thank you very much for that Francine. I'm just just sent out a message just to alert you to the fact that you can enter your questions into the Q&A section if you just toggle down and look at the bar there, please feel free to type in your questions. But I think I'll kick things off if that's okay. And I just wanna sort of challenge you a bit on this idea of this questioning of sort of the fundamental critique that the United States is the central power of this idea of hegemony. Isn't there something really to the post-colonial critique that what we're not talking about is hegemony in the sense of there's some office in Washington where somebody pushes a button and trade system moves one way or another, not that kind of hegemony. But what we're talking about is the hegemony of a certain set of ideas that fundamentally support a certain structure of power. And no, nobody's gonna dominate that, but clearly the benefits flow in one direction. So the hegemony of ideas rather than of a single political actor. It's hard to distinguish though between the set of political ideas and the political actor since they often that association is made, especially with respect to capitalism and democracy, it's linked to the United States. And I wonder sometimes if it's because I'm a Canadian and I've spent time looking not just at American records but at Canadian records and many others that I'm always skeptical about American hegemony or the hegemony of these ideas. And it's clear from across GATT members that they wanted GATT to serve a variety of different ideas. They weren't committed, I mean, orthodoxy and rigid applications of ideas. For instance, about things like the use of quantitative restrictions which in American eyes we're seen as so fundamentally anti competitive that they were not in conformity with the hegemony of ideas. Others actually saw them as serving a very useful role and it would be a means to an end where you would eventually get to support for open competition and liberalism. But the route to get there had to be more I suppose inclusive or flexible. And so I think that there was resistance to the ideas and to the rigid application of ideas. And it wasn't just between say developing countries and Americans or the richest industrial countries of the West because we see battles over the ideas and the logic and the purpose even amongst say countries like Canada, Australia, Britain and the United States which were in similar-ish positions and there's resistance to the ideas and there's resistance to the ideas either because they don't work or because there is such a close association with the United States. In many countries they want to have conditions of prosperity and diversity but they don't want to become American and there are many ways to have thriving societies and political cultures that are vibrant and responsive without being an American democracy. Of course that sounds particularly relevant today, right? I mean, who wants to, I mean, there are probably many challenges that America confronts and I think that its allies and other partners in the context of GATT challenged or accepted that those, knew those ideas wouldn't necessarily work for them either. So I think it's a challenge to American hegemony and a kind of an Americanization of the world and the ideas and the power, I think are too closely linked for me to easily separate them but I'm happy to be challenged by hegemonic stability scholars. Let's, I have a few more questions but we'll always come back to me. But I'm sorry, just perhaps somebody with better eyesight should have been assigned to read the questions but anyway, sorry, a question from Francesca. Do you think that the idea that diverging from a commitment to free trade means diverging from a commitment to peace is a self-serving prophecy? Is it a self-serving prophecy? So it could, I suppose it could be. I mean, I think that many, the argument that's being made about free or trade and it's never free trade, it's free or trade and peace, I think it serves all kinds of political objectives and as I said, I think it's important what it signals rather than whether it actually means that a country has gone rogue or is trying to attack others or acting ways that will be, that will diminish or take away from the well-being of others. I don't think that the equation is one that we should accept at face value. I think its significance is more as a rhetorical tool and a way of signaling basic intentions rather than a way of understanding how you'll conduct yourself in world affairs that isn't sort of linked to, and this is always hangover the GATT is the idea of depression era kind of politics, beggar thy neighbor policies and all those things. So there's, I think there's a really stark division that's made and I think it does serve all kinds of purposes, one of which is always to reinforce the importance of GATT and to encourage support for trade liberalization which is never all that strong which is always challenged and contested and increasingly so over the GATT's history. So is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? That's the logic that's upheld, but it's upheld because it wants people to support or countries to support trade liberalization. And it is often contradicted by the fact that people will give it will, their experiences of freer trade are not compatible with peace. So freer trade is dislocating, freer trade might mean that you actually are losing your job in order for some other sector of the economy in another part of the world to take it's reaping its comparative advantages. I mean, if the logic was that freer trade would improve the conditions in which people live their lives in the long run that might work out but not necessarily in an individual's lifetime. So I think there's an over simplistic equation that's made, but it is repeated time and time again and I think it's linked institutional security, but I also think it gets linked to a larger global political discourse about what kind of a world we want to believe in and it signals your basic intentions and position. It doesn't necessarily mean though that you are a staunch advocate of peace or war, of cooperation or conflict. And in fact, I think it's always a mix of these things, not necessarily peace and war, but conflict and cooperation are always mixed in together. I'm sorry, that's a kind of long winded circuitous answer to a very good question. Andrew wants to ask, again, sorry, this really should have got somebody with a better eyesight. I'm gonna complain to Zoom about the font size here. I was wondering if you could speak about some of the intellectualism around trade liberalization, especially in the interwar years. You mentioned in the book, the role of Norman Angel and in the first half of the 20th century, just how important were these thinkers to the foundation of the gap? So in my book, I do look at, basically starting with the establishment of the economists, but also looking at things like Smith and others, that there is this idea that a kind of an open, a liberal trade philosophy practices has implications for the state of world affairs, relations between states, and there is this equation between liberal trade and comparative advantage that goes along with the open markets and comparative advantage, leading to a world that's more peaceful and prosperous. And I think those views were important in creating a narrative that was sustained over time that could be built upon as a way of trying to make sense of, or to galvanize support for what might become a larger movement. But there were always critics of that interpretation as well. So it's never just, never becomes a hegemonic discourse, frankly. And when you think about someone like Angel, I mean, there were such critics of him, EH Carr, who absolutely denounced him. So this view, while I think it was an important one that had many supporters and developed a momentum and gained in some currency, it never dominated the way that people thought about the post-war order. But I think what's actually more important in allowing an institution like that to be created, which I think owed a lot to a very specific context and a specific time, was the experience of the Great Depression and the Second World War. And people understood that at the time, they believed that the Great Depression had been absolutely crucial as a cause behind the Second World War. And while they might look at a country like Germany or Japan and think, well, there are other factors that led them to follow the paths that they did that were catalyst to the war, they would also, they often would generalize and think they're symptomatic of larger trends. Actually, one of the main trends was about nationalism and nation states as being at root, essential to the international order and yet also the greatest threat to the stability of that order. So I think that that kind of discourse and understanding and argument about freer trade and organizations like the GATT and the condition of global order had been evolving over a long time and it had a legitimacy to it, but it was not uncontested. But in the context of the 30s and the 40s, it came to be, more people were more willing to accept that there was a truth to it, even if it was contested later. I think that timing was crucial to leading to the establishment of the GATT. And certainly those kinds of arguments, we still see a battle being waged about how do you think about global trade and freer trade? And as I put it, the image of GATT as GATT Zilla at the start, I mean, many see it as a Pandora's box that unleashed a slew of eagles on the world. And then there are others who insist that the GATT was a do-gooding organization that works for peace. And that debate, I think, is unresolved where you align yourself in that debate depends on how you make sense of the world, how you've experienced your own life. Just to shift the focus, because a lot of our focus has been on the GATT in international politics and international trade. What about the GATT as an institution? I wonder, we've hosted many scholars including Susan Pedersen at the various centers. And what I've always found interesting is the way that people, when they study an international institution, they sort of pick favorite personalities and begin to understand the organization as a very human body of people. Did you come away with an impression of the GATT as, you know, just get favorite personalities? There was sort of a GATT official mind or collected at mind? Very ill. No question, but you know what I mean. Well, I definitely, my view of the GATT understanding of it has changed over time. And one of the things is you see this external facade of the GATT, which often is completely disconnected from what's happening behind the scenes. I see a very important role for the secretariat to play. And that is filled with internationally minded civil servants who I think are just far more proactive, but also very, as I said, discreet about what they do. So they're crucial to the work of the GATT. And I guess if I had a favorite personality, it probably is Eric Wyndham-White, who was the first executive secretary and he took this position on for 20 years. And I talk about him a fair bit in the book. And he was someone who had attended, for instance, meetings of the international, he was a chamber of commerce or business people in the 1930s, including a meeting that was held in Germany in the late 1930s, where obviously the trade and peace argument was being articulated, but it wasn't terribly persuasive. And he's someone who, you see the force of individual leadership, how effective it can be in determining the fate of an organization. And Wyndham-White was so successful. And I think being in that position for 20 years helped him to know everybody and work with everybody, but he was so successful in building coalitions of support, in breaking down resistance. So sometimes individuals, I think, especially within an organization that was small, the GATT was so much smaller than the World Bank or the IMF or many other organizations, that he was, individuals within the secretariat could have, I think a sort of disproportionate impact on the organization. But I think what I see is that there's a sense that the GATT that people work for believe it isn't due-gooding organization, and then they face this world which sees it in very different terms. There is a sense of being beleaguered or besieged that comes across quite strongly in the history of GATT. And what I also see is that both approaches, both conceptions of global trade as a force for good and as a force for destabilization, disruption and chaos, both of those things are right. And there's lots of historical evidence to back them, both at. Since we have a, I imagine quite a number of students in the audience who might be thinking about PhD topics or perhaps more modestly MA research topics. I mean, one of the themes, the sort of the rejuvenation of the history of the league and the various secretariats in the economic section, Patricia Klavin, her work, but others working on sort of this concept of international organizations as creators of knowledge, particular kind of knowledge, international knowledge. I mean, you mentioned in passing the vast statistical body statistical information they produced. I mean, is there room for maybe a book on GATT and statistics as, or GATT as a creator or a center of a particular kind of knowledge? Could it be a whole MA thesis possibly? Yeah, I think that, I mean, and there's actually a wonderful source that GATT archives have been digitized and they're based in Stanford. So all of their records are available. And I have to say, it takes some time to get used to reading them. When I first began to read GATT documents and they come in kind of pale blue or pale green paper. And I have to confess my eyes would glaze over and I would just turn the pages to get to something else. And then I had to force myself to learn to read them. And then there's so many layers of meaning in them. I think what's useful too is that, you know, the statistics, it's not just what the statistics reveal. It's how they're being used, why they're being put together. And there's one moment in, I guess it's in the 1980s when there's a rise of, well, a new rise of protectionism. And the GATT's very concerned about this as well as many members of GATT were concerned about the turn to protectionism. And so the GATT Secretary commissioned an expert report. And I remember reading in one source, they said, I think it was Arthur Dunkel commissioned this report. And they said he got the report he wanted. So there's a manipulation of knowledge to serve a certain objective. And I think seeing the GATT as proactive in that way and as making a case for itself, that it's not this neutral, it's not a neutral space. It is a bastion of internationalist knowledge. And but I do think it had this, the Secretary had this moment of realization that there are limits to how far it can push and that internationalism starts to have injurious consequences for some members, some people, some of the time. So I think the way in which the GATT maneuvered politically I think is a fascinating study. And I think today of all the international organizations generating data and information, some of which is credible, some which is not believed but the debate over knowledge, the debate over statistics and what they mean is would be really interesting to look at. And I think it's important that institutions, they shouldn't just be humanized, it's not a human entity but it's filled with individuals whose own stories and agendas I think are important to understanding. There is this very important human element in the story of these institutions that needs to be told more fully. Great, thank you. Sorry, I neglected a question from Frank, I'm a terrible chair. Frank asks, thank you for the excellent talk. Your categories of analysis certainly complicate perspectives on US hegemony. For example, at the same time, there seems to be a stark contrast between the world-making at GATT and public discourses on global trade. In other words, there seems to be a tension between those involved in GATT and global audiences. Could you discuss the tensions, contradictions in global imagination and globalist practices? Apologies again, Frank. Frank, thanks for that question. Coming from London, Ontario actually, if it's a question, it's my colleague. So that's a great question, Frank. And in fact, I think that that tension between the GATT and I think the use of the word world-making is a great one. And global audiences is a complicated one. And it's not just a question of tension because there were always constituencies that supported GATT and the logic, the internationalist logic that it espoused. But those audiences tended to be more quiet or muted in their support. And those who felt that they were dislocated or suffered from trade were much more outspoken in denouncing global trade and the GATT. So I think it's not just that there's a single global audience, there are different global audiences, but they articulate or they present their position at different levels of volume. And the opponents are just much louder. And they tend to be louder because they suffer more from global trade, at least in the here and now. So we think about constituencies that rose up against global trade. It could be labor and vulnerable sectors like the textile sector, farmers who were very active globally in a global protest movement starting in the 1980s in the context of GATT, which was when actually GATT first really began to get international attention. So one of the benefits that the GATT had early on in its history was that it seemed just so incredibly technical and so boring and so a realm that didn't speak to global audiences, but that it was that it flew below the radar of public opinion or public attention, probably until the 1980s. It very rarely was reported on in the newspaper, certainly almost never made front pages of newspapers. And so there was a sense of this quieter globalist group that supported GATT, that that view prevailed. But in the 1980s that began to change. Actually environmentalists also began to rise up and denounce the GATT. And they used as their icon, the dolphin. It's very hard to not be on the side of the group that has the dolphin as their similar mascot. So there was this apparently growing, there was a, it wasn't just a growing disconnect, but that tension became more obvious and was certainly the criticisms of GATT and global trade. Those who were opposed to trade, so farmers and environmentalists, maybe environmentalists less about farmers, elicited a lot of public support. So, and that was a challenge. And what did the GATT do? The GATT secretary general, the director's general, they launched a PR campaign. I don't think it was ever very effective, but they would go and meet with groups that were most opposed to them. And they would talk about this internationalist logic, probably convincing no one. And actually I refer to consumers of the world unite. I mean, there is a speech by Arthur Duncalder Peter Sutherland, who was trying to make a case that the logic of protectionism would actually kind of diminish everyone and enslave them and said, you know, consumers of the world, you should unite and back an organization like GATT because that benefits everyone. Everyone is a consumer. But you know what? When you're a consumer and the benefit you see from GATT is that you might go to, or trade liberalization is that you might go to the grocery store and pay a few less pennies for a pint of strawberries. That doesn't really affect the way you think about global trade. Whereas if you're in a job, say, in a textile factory in the United States and you're about to lose your job, now that is gonna get you up and angry and speaking about the challenges. So I think that there, this tension between the GATT and liberal trade and global audiences was one that didn't include all global audiences, but it included those that were most upset or experienced GATT and liberal trade, the consequences most injuriously. And there are so many people who hate organizations like the World Trade Organization who hated GATT and feared it. And I do think actually that the logic in this debate, in these debates, whether you accept the trade in peace or the kind of trade is destabilizing and makes me lose my job argument, I think they're both arguments that require leaps of faith. And I think faith and fear are crucial to understanding how people decide they're gonna support one or the other argument. It's not a question of economic analysis in the end. So to get back to your question, Joe, about statistics. In the end, I think statistics don't really explain very much about how people think about global trade. Yeah, thanks Francine from Frank. I'm gonna ask a question I think is probably in the back of everyone's mind at the moment, which is, and I'm gonna just press you a bit. I know as a historian, I don't like to be pushed to make predictions for sure or even to indicate trends, but I'm gonna do it anyway. Where are we going? Are we looking at a world of, in the next few decades of regional blocks, sort of an early 30s type of international trading patterns or do global supply chains and the way they've been patterned since the 1990s make that impossible. I mean, do you have a sense of, I was struck by Thoreau's, 1989, the GATT is dead on the basis of regional blocks beginning to emerge, which kind of was reminiscent of post-1919 thoughts about regional, despite the drive for free trade under the gold regime, you could see the outlines of regional orders emerging. I wonder if we're seeing, is it the same pattern? Are we in sort of a, I'm asking several questions, but are we in a 1930s moment that we're heading in that direction or are you a bit more optimistic? I don't have a great answer. I'm both optimistic and pessimistic. In a way, when I think about the history of GATT, I think all of these things we see now are familiar. There's nothing new. There's nothing new about protectionism. There's nothing new about deviating from the rules. There's nothing new about pushing back at the authority or actions or legitimacy of international organizations. So in a way, I think, oh, this should be familiar. This is the kind of messy model we've always been in and we've always kept moving without too many disasters or at least mega-scale disasters. And yet at the same time, I do worry. I do worry that not just the rise to regionalism, I think those regional things have always existed. And again, there are different ways of thinking about it. They could be helpful to the cause of everyone or they could break down into silos and promote rivalry and zero-sum policies that lead to some thriving and others suffering. But I do worry. I think that kind of the quest for balance that you had to have both national and international interests and thinking working in tandem as much as possible, I see that really breaking down and that worries me. But in the context of the World Trade Organization and with all the hoopla about America objection to the kind of judicial role that the WTO plays, which is not somebody surprising, it really is an expansion of the WTO's reach and has domestic implications, which I think someone like Eric Wyndham-Wyte probably would have steered clear of because it's asking for that national sovereignty backlash. But when I look at the WTO or even the World Health Organization, you see many of those smaller members stepping up and thinking, how can we reform the organization? How can we respond? Can we find workarounds? And one of the challenges with so much of the literature on the global order or organizations like GATT is that the focus on a hegemon or the leaders means that their policies seem to be decisive for the organization. And one of the things I've tried to argue in GATT is that all these other members matter too. And in fact, I think we see today that it's the support of smaller countries and their willingness to expend resources to come up with workarounds or new solutions or reforms, that they still believe these organizations and the logic that informs them has a validity. It does something for them. And so that I think, well, maybe that's the future, that these organizations, if they continue to support it, they'll still limp along. But I never think of the post-war global order as ever really thriving. It's always kind of limped along. So I am both pessimistic and then there are things I see that make me think, well, maybe we'll just keep going as we always have. So sorry to say on the fence. Not at all. And I thank you for the glimmer of hope and I think you're right that what is the alternative to multilateral regimes of trade monetary systems and so on other than all that we were. So the original liberal thinkers certainly had a point in that respect. Well, I think we're at our time and I want to actually, if you want to express your thanks in the chat, I'm sure that Francine would greatly appreciate it. Otherwise, I'm going to applaud on all of your behalf. And thank you. This evening and it was a great talk, a great summary of a great book. And well, we're going to be posting this online and I hope that generates yet more interest. And thank you, Chris. Thank you, Francine. And I wonder if we could just have a few minutes afterwards to discuss any final logistical issues. So thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you for making time for this.