After Nations

What has happened to the nation-state? From a prizewinning writer, After Nations offers a sweeping history of this most unquestioned of modern structures and a bold speculation about its future.

Until recently, the system of nation-states appeared settled and eternal. Not anymore. As American hegemony unwinds and Western countries slide into anxiety and debt, there is a resurgence of tyranny, imperialism and war. It is no longer clear that states can continue delivering ‘normal’ services, let alone defeat inequality and climate change. Even in rich countries, many feel they are being progressively neglected; in some parts of the world, populations are entirely abandoned by nation-states and must build systems of their own.

Rana Dasgupta traces the formation and rise of the nation-state system to explain its multiple failures today. He takes us from the fall of ancient empires and the expansion of European concepts of money and law right up to the emergence of twenty-first-century tech firms – the first significant new geopolitical actors to emerge since the inception of nation-states – and the epochal restoration of Chinese power. He posits that the time has come to develop a new conception of citizenship, law, and economy―one that corresponds to our globalized and ecologically fragile condition.

Richly detailed, urgent and told with remarkable clarity, After Nations is an essential text for anyone looking to understand why we seem to be losing our political hold on the world, and how we might try to restore it.

Review

‘Simply astonishing […] Dasgupta is consistently insightful, thought-provoking, and on point. Above all, this book is a call to rediscover our species’ most basic and important form of freedom: to create new social worlds and alternative political realities.’

David Wengrow, co-author of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, and Professor of Comparative Archaeology at UCL

‘Dasgupta has given us the new political breviary of our century. It is the most incisive, urgent, and necessary reflection on political philosophy I have read in decades – the first in a very long time that does not leave me with a sense of despair, but instead fills me with profound hope. A new classic, the twenty-first century’s counterpart to Hobbes’s Leviathan.’

Emanuele Coccia, author of The Life of Plants and Philosophy of the Home

‘The definitive story of the nation-state could only have been told at its end. God, money, law and nature were harnessed to forge the state – but now each force is undermining it. Fluidity is the norm of history, whether under empires of the past or – as Rana Dasgupta imagines in this sweeping narrative – through a new constitution for civilization co-created by all of us: citizens of the new Enlightenment.’

Parag Khanna, Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo and author of MOVE: Where People are Going for a Better Future

'After Nations is an innovative and erudite historical reflection on our contemporary crisis […] His book boldly sketches out a vision for what might come After Nations.'

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Political Scientist & Princeton University Lecturer

'Splendid'

Branko Milanović, author of The Great Global Transformation

‘An essential, eye-opening account […] it is our ignorance which makes this book so important.'

Bryan Appleyard, Engelsberg Ideas

'A must-read for anyone with a deep interest in international politics, the future of the world, and how different systems of governance evolved in major regions over the past few hundred years.'

About the Author

Rana Dasgupta was born in 1971, and grew up in Cambridge. He worked for a marketing consultancy in London and New York for a few years before moving to Delhi to write. His first novel, ‘Tokyo Cancelled’, a thirteen-part story cycle, was published in 2005 to widespread acclaim and has been translated into nine languages.

Dasgupta now lives permanently in Delhi, and writes for several periodicals, including the ‘Guardian’, ’New Statesman’ and BBC radio.