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E-book
Author McCoy, Alfred W., author.

Title To govern the globe : world orders and catastrophic change / Alfred W. McCoy
Published Chicago, Illinois : Haymarket Books, 2021
©2021

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 429 pages) : illustrations, maps, portraits
Contents Foreword by Jeremy Scahill -- Chronology: World orders, 1300 to 2300 -- Empires and world orders -- The Iberian age -- Empires of commerce and capital -- Britannia rules the waves -- Pax Americana -- Beijing's world system -- Climate change in the twenty-first century
Summary During the long centuries of Iberian and British imperial rule, the quest for new forms of energy led to the development of the colonial sugar plantation as a uniquely profitable kind of commerce. In a time when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing urgency, the book explains how the plantation's extraordinary profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for over four centuries. After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future. By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of their lives -- 2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond
Notes Includes index
Bibliography Include bibliographic references (pages 325-409) and index
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (viewed December 20, 2021)
Subject World politics -- History
Imperialism -- History
Civilization, Modern.
Climatic changes -- Social aspects
Disasters -- History
Civilization, Modern
Climatic changes -- Social aspects
Disasters
Imperialism
World politics
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2021952164
ISBN 9781642596755
1642596752