Pax Economica: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Marc-William Palen

In this latest episode of In Theory, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Marc-William Palen, Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, about his new book, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World (Princeton University Press, 2024).  Palen begins his story in the 1840s, and shows how over a century of left-wing activists, politicians, and scholars imagined ways to transform the world through free-trade economics. People with distinct and overlapping politics populate this world, including anti-colonial nationalists, liberals, socialists, Christians, and feminists. Through an analysis of the evolving discussions of the meaning of free trade and protectionism for war and peace across British, US, French, Dutch, Japanese, and other empires, Palen traces the 19th century left-wing origins of free-trade economics and the contest with its right-wing counterparts to the establishment of the post-1945 economic order.