Abstract
This article tracks the rise and relative decline of the term economic miracle across the twentieth century. The term emerged first in the late nineteenth century as a rhetorical means of disciplining political aspirations and emphasizing the limits of government power, but transformed during the First World War as the British bucked expert expectations by maintaining a prewar standard of living despite mass mobilization. This experience expanded the horizon of the imaginable and made the economic miracle a more plausible aspiration for fascist powers, post-fascist powers, and later developing countries. From the 1970s until the Asian financial crisis in 1997, economic miracle talk was a proxy terrain for debates about industrial policy, authoritarian governance, and rapid growth. Miracle talk has subsided in the twenty-first century, replaced by more sober talk of geoeconomics, neomercantilism, and the developmental state.
