The End of the Nation State?

Where did the nation-state come from—and what happens if the conditions that made it powerful are now disappearing?

Thomas discusses these questions and much more in this wide-ranging Conflicted Conversation with award-winning novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose new book After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order sets out to explain where our world order came from and where it could be going.

Rana explains:

The origins of the modern nation-state and the decline of universal sacred empires

Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns and the sacralisation of the French state

How Enlightenment political theology transformed God, sovereignty and individual rights

Industrialisation, mass democracy, welfare states and the political power of workers

Liberalism, populism and the changing relationship between elites and mass democracy

The origins of international law in empire, property rights and global capitalism

Why the postwar rules-based international order is now weakening

The East India Company, Silicon Valley and the rise of quasi-sovereign corporate power

China as an alternative model of state power and control over private capital