The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire and the Birth of Global Economic Governance
- Starts4:00 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2023
- Ends5:30 pm on Wednesday, February 15, 2023
International economic institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank exert incredible influence over the domestic policies of many states. These institutions date from the end of World War II and amassed power during the neoliberal era of the late twentieth century. But the deep origins of their controversial powers date to a much earlier era.
“The Meddlers” by Jamie Martin tells the story of the first international institutions to govern the world economy, including the League of Nations and Bank for International Settlements, created after World War I. These institutions endowed civil servants, bankers and colonial authorities from Europe and the United States with extraordinary powers: to enforce austerity, coordinate the policies of independent central banks, oversee development programs and regulate commodity prices. In a highly unequal world, they faced a new political challenge: was it possible to reach into sovereign states and empires to intervene in domestic economic policies without generating a backlash?
Martin follows the intense political conflicts provoked by the earliest international efforts to govern capitalism and shows how the fraught problems of sovereignty and democracy posed by institutions like the IMF are not unique to late twentieth-century globalization, but instead first emerged during an earlier period of imperial competition, world war and economic crisis.
On Wednesday, February 15 from 4:00-5:30PM, join us for an in-person event featuring Jamie Martin, Assistant Professor of History and Social Studies at Harvard University, and Kevin P. Gallagher, Director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center and Professor of Global Development Policy for a conversation on global economic governance, the Bretton Woods institutions and more.
Light refreshments will be provided at a reception following the event.
- Location:
- BU Hillel House, River Room (4th Floor)
- Registration:
- https://gdpcenter.org/Meddlers