Are we ready for another ‘change of the World Order’?

Rana Dasgupta takes as his central theme the history of the  nation state. He describes how it came into existence, why it  appears to be weakening, and what might be done to sustain it  from the wreckage. It is a far cry from ‘the end of history’  described by Francis Fukuyama in the 1990s when it seemed that  a predominantly neo-liberal world order was unchallengeable. 

That vision seems even more remote now than when it was first  put forward and Dasgupta gives it short shrift. His own four-part  framework also requires some suspension of disbelief. He takes  France as the epitome of an era in which political order was  sanctified by God; Britain as the prime actor representing the  supremacy of money and by extension the sanctity, even ‘dictatorship’, of property; America of Law; and China of Agriculture. 

Dasgupta modestly says that his book contains no new information. He re-interprets the work of a multitude of historians and specialists on economic, ecological and social  revolutions, and other major changes. As a novelist himself, he  insists that writing history is another kind of storytelling, much  like a novel. The categories he uses are less strictly historical than  recurring patterns. Theology may be sparsely used in today’s  intellectual world, yet Dasgupta uses the term ‘theological’ to  explain the idea of the state as a ‘mortal god’ as opposed to the  transcendent ‘immortal god’ of much religious belief. Dasgupta  himself prefers the term ‘cosmological’ but he sees the concepts  as essentially similar. The 19th century French writer Charles  Maurras – not a name much cited today in orthodox international relations theory – is identified as a prime source of  21st century right wing conceptions of the state. 

Asia looms large in the rise of Money because the Chinese empire  had needed nothing from Europe and her luxury products could  only be bought with silver bullion. When that was in short  supply, British merchants, primarily the East India Company,  created and sustained a growing addiction to opium, and in spite  of an imperial ban forcibly used it as a substitute currency of  exchange. 

British merchants used opium as a tool of trade with Qing  China, turning commercial imbalance into imperial domination and accelerating the collapse of the old order. Photo: Asia Pacific Curriculum 

Moreover, the empires that preceded the nations of today are  re-appearing in a new form. The prime example is China where  the concept of tiangxia or ‘everything under heaven’ was taken to  describe the extent of Chinese imperial sovereignty. But this  sovereignty was not absolute. It could be exercised for hundreds  of years by one dynasty but if, as with the Qin dynasty and its  successors, the dynasty was unable to provide the protection and  support that was expected, sovereignty and tiangxia would be  presumed to have been forfeited and pass to a stronger  successor. 

Dasgupta’s analysis of China’s imperial legacy and its troubled  and violent evolution as a nation state is particularly relevant to  his argument. Foreign aggression and the so-called ‘unequal  treaties’ sapped its strength and ultimately though by no means  inevitably led to revolution. In the perception of the CCP their  eventual victory validated the passing of ‘everything under  heaven’ (with the exception of the Nationalist stronghold of  Taiwan) to the People’s Republic. This owed much to the  influence on Mao Tse Tung of the traditionalist, even  conservative, reformer Kang Youwei (1858-1927), described by a  contemporary as the ‘Martin Luther of Confucianism’. This gives  it, in Dasgupta’s reading, a unique status as a nation state with a  difference. It also provides an example of how future nation  states may evolve in the wake of fragmentation and in some  cases collapse.

Reformer and philosopher Kang Youwei profoundly influenced modern Chinese political thought, blending Confucian tradition with visions of state reform that later shaped competing ideas of China’s future. 

The post-1945 world system was largely shaped by the Bretton  Woods conference. Its principal architects were the British  economist John Maynard Keynes and the American Harry  Dexter White. The system, dominated by America, established  two major institutions the IMF and the World Bank which  remain at its centre today. The latter (initially called the  International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or  IBRD) was to be headed permanently by an American citizen.  The irony of these powerful institutions (though Dasgupta does  not mention this) was that Dexter White has subsequently been  shown to have been a long-standing Soviet agent. Dasgupta  does, however, note that even before World War II America was  finding that it needed the support of big American corporations  to manage the imperial system that it was inheriting. And he  notes that democracy was significantly downgraded as a core  priority in its management. American corporate power has  subsequently been matched by Chinese corporate power within  the same framework. 

The post-1945 international system built at Bretton  Woods institutionalised American-led global finance through the IMF and World Bank.

Dasgupta’s concluding chapter addresses the issue implicitly  posed by the book’s title, —essentially, what comes next? Can  we create systems for future generations beyond the nation  state? He dismisses as ‘absurd both in practice and theory’ the  idea that there can be a ‘world government’ with similar  trappings to the nation state. He derives from the practice of  wealthy individuals moving offshore or on to a virtual network  the idea (credited to Balaji Srinivasan) of a ‘network state’, a sort  of glorified Facebook. 

One of the book’s central fascinations is how the millennia of  world history can be accommodated in the very broad  framework of Dasgupta’s scholarship. The book ranges widely:  readers encounter Donald Trump alongside Qin emperors to  illustrate a characteristic of ancient Chinese history which has  remained contemporary. His final message is one of ‘hope, not  despair.’ The creative ability of humanity to invent new social  systems for new eras has been demonstrated time and again and  he is confident that it can happen again.