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Seminar: Jamie Martin, ‘The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance’

by Gareth Bryant on May 31, 2023

Seminar: Jamie Martin, ‘The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance’

Gareth Bryant | May 31, 2023

Tags: capitalism events global history
capitalism, events, global history
| 6 423

THE RECORDING FOR THIS EVENT IS AVAILABLE HERE.

Political Economy Seminar

The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance

Presenter: Jamie Martin, Harvard University

Date: Friday 23 June 2023

Time: 11am (Sydney/Australian Eastern Time)

Online: Please join via Zoom

Please join us for a seminar with Jamie Martin, on his book, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, recently published by Harvard University Press.

Martijn Konings will also speak as discussant.

About the talk

International economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank exert incredible influence over the domestic policies of many states. These institutions date from the end of World War II and amassed power during the neoliberal era of the late twentieth century. But as Jamie Martin shows, if we want to understand their deeper origins and the ideas and dynamics that shaped their controversial powers, we must turn back to the explosive political struggles that attended the birth of global economic governance in the early twentieth century.

The Meddlers tells the story of the first international institutions to govern the world economy, including the League of Nations and Bank for International Settlements, created after World War I. These institutions endowed civil servants, bankers, and colonial authorities from Europe and the United States with extraordinary powers: to enforce austerity, coordinate the policies of independent central banks, oversee development programs, and regulate commodity prices. In a highly unequal world, they faced a new political challenge: was it possible to reach into sovereign states and empires to intervene in domestic economic policies without generating a backlash?

Martin follows the intense political conflicts provoked by the earliest international efforts to govern capitalism—from Weimar Germany to the Balkans, Nationalist China to colonial Malaya, and the Chilean desert to Wall Street. The Meddlers shows how the fraught problems of sovereignty and democracy posed by institutions like the IMF are not unique to late twentieth-century globalization, but instead first emerged during an earlier period of imperial competition, world war, and economic crisis.

“The Meddlers is an eye-opening, essential new history that places our international financial institutions in the transition from a world defined by empire to one of nation states enmeshed in the world economy.”—Adam Tooze, Columbia University

About the speaker

Jamie Martin is an international historian with a focus on the history of international political economy and empire, particularly during the era of the world wars. He is the author of The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance (Harvard University Press, 2022), which charts the origins and rise of the first international institutions to govern global capitalism after World War I – and the political resistance they generated around the world, from Western Europe to the Balkans, the United States, Latin America, China, and colonial Southeast Asia. He has published widely on the political economy of the world wars, international institutions, the history of commodities, and the intellectual history of crisis. His public writing – on topics such as the history of central banking, financial crisis, and global governance – has also appeared in The New York Times, The London Review of Books, The Nation, n+1, Dissent, Bookforum, and The Guardian.

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Author: Gareth Bryant

Gareth Bryant is a political economist at the University of Sydney. He works as a senior lecturer in the Department of Political Economy and as economist-in-residence with the Sydney Policy Lab.

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Comments

  • Alex Nagy | Jun 1 2323

    Looks like an amazing seminar! Could it be recorded by any chance?

    0
  • Gareth Bryant | Jun 13 2323

    Hi Alex yes I think so! We will post the recording here

    0
  • Alex Nagy | Jul 5 2323

    Hey Gareth, no luck on the recording front by any chance is there?

    0
  • Gareth Bryant | Jul 6 2323

    Hi Alex! Yes I have the recording, which we will be posting soon alongside text from the event from Martijn and Jamie. In the meantime though I can email you the recording link – email me at gareth.bryant@sydney.edu.au

    0
  • Kapila Perera | Dec 14 2323

    Can you send me the recording

    1
    • Adam David Morton | Dec 15 2323

      Available here: https://www.ppesydney.net/discussion-martijn-konings-and-jamie-martin-on-the-meddlers/

      0

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  • Home
  • About
  • Manchester University Press Book Series
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  • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE)
    • JAPE Issues
    • JAPE Submission Guidelines
    • JAPE Young Scholar Award
  • Australian IPE Network (AIPEN)
  • Forums
    • Forums
    • Debating Anatomies of Revolution
    • Debating Debtfare States
    • Debating Economic Ideas in Political Time
    • Debating Making Global Society
    • Debating Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India
    • Debating Social Movements in Latin America
    • Debating The Making of Modern Finance
    • Debating War and Social Change in Modern Europe
    • Feminist Global “Secureconomy”
    • Gendered Circuits of Labour and Violence in Global Crises
    • Scandalous Economics
    • The Military Roots of Neoliberal Governance
    • Politicising artistic pedagogies
  • Literary Geographies of Political Economy
  • PPExchanges
  • Pedagogy
    • IPEEL Of The Environmental Crisis
    • Five Minute Honours Theses
    • Piketty Forum
    • Radical Economics Pedagogy
    • Unconventional Wisdom
    • Journal Club
    • Marxism Reading Group
  • Wheelwright Lecture
  • Events
  • Contributors
  • Links
    • Political Economy At Sydney
    • PHD in Political Economy
    • Master of Political Economy
    • Centre for Future Work
    • Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ)
    • Climate Justice Research Centre (UTS)