Sir Norman Angell (1872–1967,) original name Ralph Norman Angell-Lane, was a British economist and worker for international peace. This 1933 Nobel Prize in Peace wrote The Great Illusion (1910) and The Great Illusion, 1933 (1933) to attest to the economic futility of war, even for the victors.
Born in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England, Angell was educated in France, London, and Geneva. He spent 1890–98 in the United States, working as a cowboy, a prospector, and a journalist for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and San Francisco Chronicle. Returning to Europe, he held editorial posts at Galignani’s Messenger (1899–1903) and Foreign Affairs (1928–31.) He served as a Labour MP 1929–31.
Angell’s most famous work, The Great Illusion (1910,) translated into more than a score of languages. It established the fallacy of the idea that conquest and war brought a nation great economic advantage and ensured its living space access to markets, trade, and raw materials. The Great Illusion, 1933 (1933) explored the economic developments and ideas of the intervening 23 years since the first edition.
A prolific writer, Angell produced more than one book a year. His other notable publications include The Dangers of Half Preparedness (1916,) If Britain is to Live (1923,) Preface to Peace: A Guide for the Plain Man (1935,) Peace with the Dictators? (1938,) and Why Freedom Matters (1940.)
Angell also invented the Money Game, a series of card games using paper money to teach currency, finance, banking, and credit fundamentals. He published The Money Game, How to Play It: A New Instrument of Economic Education (1928.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Norman Angell
It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion.
—Norman Angell
Topics: Facts
God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.
—Norman Angell
Topics: Canada
Every nation sincerely desires peace; and all nations pursue courses which if persisted in, must make peace impossible
—Norman Angell
Topics: Nation
The one distinctive advance in civil society achieved by the Anglo-Saxon world is fairly betokened by the passing away of this notion of a peculiar possession in the way of honor which had to be guarded by arms.
—Norman Angell
Topics: War
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