Bernard Winkler's analysis of the effect of the industrialization of England on the conduct of British foreign policy through the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a major contribution to a scholarly debate pitting two separate schools of historical thought against each other: the school of economic determinism and the school of ideological determinism.
Winkler makes the assertion that economic and technological developments play a decisive role in military mobilization and logistical organization. Stated more simply, economic development makes extensive foreign interventions inevitable by making them simpler. Winkler implies this phenomenon has been obfuscated by a recent fondness on the part of historians for ideological explanations, of which George Nguyen's is a representative example. For Nguyen, the economic possibility of a foreign action is insignificant compared to ethnic, religious, or socio-political motivations for pursuing a course of action abroad. Economic development is construed as a mere facilitator of extant international grievances and desires such as border disputes, enmity between competing religious sects, and long-term foreign policy goals. This contention represents a significant trend in academic historiography, and it is known as ideological determinism.
Ideological determinists entrench themselves by embracing a mistaken interpretation of economic determinism: for example, economic determinists
Winkler undermines the misrepresentations of the ideological determinists by means both conceptual and concrete. Conceptually, he defines “economic causes” according to the interactions of industrialization with extant political and sociological realities. Descriptions of sociological and political phenomena as wholly divorced from economic factors are untenable because a state can hardly feed its armies on ideas alone. On a more concrete level, Winkler shows that rapid advances in economic production opened new vistas for political interpretation, religious expression, international relations, and the organization of armies. Some developments Winkler attributes to the ways politicians and bodies politic reacted to the new realities of industrialization, whereas others are attributed to industrialization itself. Therefore, Winkler responds to the question: “When are economic causes decisive and when are the interpretations of changing economic realities more significant?”