In the ruins of Empire

Globalisation is such a fascinating and powerful idea that it never fails to evoke a strong reaction, either supporting it with a missionary zeal or opposing it with the passion of a suicide bomber. In the avalanche of rhetoric, facts inevitably get blurred; false hopes and dreams hold sway among some, while paranoia and nightmare grips others. To make sense of the ongoing churning, one needs to move away from these two extremes – to look at the fact more closely, provide a historical perspective and caution the rest of us about the pitfalls. Senior journalist Prem Shankar Jha has now taken up that task. While the neo-evangelists of globalisation may term his voice as that of a doomsday prophet, a closer reading of The Twilight of the Nation State reveals that Jha is fulfilling the first rule of good journalism: that of a timely whistleblower.

The post-Cold War transformation of the global economy and politics has centred on three utopias: democracy, liberalisation and globalisation. Jha brings to the fore his concern for the unsaid – the pain of transition, and the inherent contradictions in the transformation. Drawing heavily from the works of historian Eric Hobsbawm (who provides an introduction to this volume), as well as social scientists Giovanni Arrighi and Fernand Braudel, Jha places globalisation within the context of the development of capitalism, and helps readers appreciate how much wishful thinking actually underlies the belief in human progress.