After Nations is all about a world falling apart — and it is ours

He points out that the current system is heavily skewed in favour of those with resources, concentrating power in the hands of a few, and is unable to meet the basic needs of many people. The goals that drive nation-states of today are more about power and profits — a far cry from ideals that made the post–Second World War era seem one of optimism and liberty.

As Dasgupta says, “Our nation-state system has lost its Byronic pathos: in a remarkably brief period, its demented extraction from the earth and from human minds and bodies has caused the sensation of progress to be replaced with the anxiety of futurelessness.”

The making and unmaking of the nation-state: France, Britain, America and China

After Nations is Dasgupta’s take on how we reached this state of affairs, delving into the past and looking at different world orders and systems of governance and rule. In that regard, it is a bit like his brilliant Capital, which detailed the changes in India’s capital Delhi and won him a number of awards.

However, it is written very differently. While Capital was packed with multiple human narratives and felt almost personal in many places, in After Nations, Dasgupta takes a step back, is more erudite, and almost seems academic. This is not a page-turner, but the kind of book one puts down after a few pages to ponder and think about what one has read.

Spread across close to 500 pages, After Nations is basically a study of the systems of governance that led to the development of the current nation-state. The book is divided into four broad categories revolving around the states or empires of four major nations.

The first is France, where God or divinity was taken as a driving force. The second is Britain, where property — its expansion and plunder — played a key role. Then comes the United States, in which capitalism was driven by law, paving the way for pursuit of profit becoming legalised and for corporate dominance. The fourth section is the one many will find most interesting. It revolves around China, which has aligned its system around making the most of what nature has given in terms of resources and is trying to extend this model overseas.

After Nations is a book in which economic systems, social conditions and history intermingle.

The power that is China

After Nations is a book in which economic systems, social conditions and history intermingle as Dasgupta walks us through the development of the nation-state through these different perspectives. In each case, we are shown how a system developed and how it eventually came apart, even while learning about historical, political and cultural events that contributed to their rise and decline.

While the French, British (yes, plenty of East India Company shenanigans there) and American sections do have a sense of familiarity about them, as they are reasonably well documented — albeit in other contexts — Dasgupta’s excellent analysis of China makes for compelling reading, given the relative lack of information in this regard.

In particular, the book draws attention to the nation’s ability to emerge as a superpower even when the likes of the US were trying to isolate it, thanks to what Dasgupta calls a “new energy vision,” founded on “solar and wind power, new battery technologies, and electric vehicles” — an approach that, he points out, not only opened massive commercial opportunities to a capitalist-driven world (ironically created by the West) but also paved the way for eroding the US’s hydrocarbon-based dominance. Dasgupta also draws attention to China’s skilful use of its water resources and waterways to build alliances and promote its shipping.

The need for a new world order and “global commons”

Irrespective of the nation or region he covers, the theme in After Nations is broadly the same, with some minor changes: selfish interests ruling the roost and people’s needs getting ignored rather than represented. What makes this worse, Dasgupta points out, is that with the advance of technology, those who are in power do not need the general public as they once did — wars can be fought by drones, agriculture can be done by machinery and robots, as technology takes the “labour” out of labour-intensive tasks.

Finding an alternative to the current nation-state is not easy, as this is a system that covers most of the world today — 99.75 per cent of the people in the world live in nation-states, compared to only about 25 per cent in 1900, when empires were the rule rather than the exception and a handful of countries ruled the others. Ironically, we are heading towards the same state of affairs, with a few nations and organisations largely setting the agenda for the rest of the world.

“The system of nation-states is mutating such that it is unable to deliver to human beings the once-promised rights, freedoms and securities,” he concludes.

Dasgupta tries to give an alternative to the current nation-state system in the final chapter of the book, attempting to come up with what he terms “systems of security and prosperity which do not depend solely on the goodwill of nation-states.” His solution is not a simplistic “world state,” which he says would “simply reproduce the anachronism of the nation-state at an overwhelmingly larger, and therefore more nightmarish, scale,” but more a sort of parallel “global commons” to which some universal laws are applicable and which is administered by an organisation similar to the United Nations.

Dasgupta proposes elaborate structures of currency, citizenship and more in this regard — this is not a pithy solution of an armchair observer, but a very well thought-out and researched option.

Unlike Capital, After Nations is not an easy read, and at times seems almost sluggish thanks to its author’s penchant for long, drawn-out sentences. It is, however, 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. It is a very timely reminder to policymakers, too, of the distance between the state and those who elect it — the people. Be patient with it, keep a dictionary handy, and you will be rewarded with a wealth of detail and concepts, and perhaps even a glimpse of where the world is headed.

After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order
Rana Dasgupta
496 pp
Penguin India
Rs 999