Where did the nation-state come from—and what happens if the conditions that made it powerful are now disappearing?

Thomas discusses these questions and much more in this wide-ranging Conflicted Conversation with award-winning novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose new book After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order sets out to explain where our world order came from and where it could be going.

Rana explains:

• The origins of the modern nation-state and the decline of universal sacred empires
• Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns and the sacralisation of the French state
• How Enlightenment political theology transformed God, sovereignty and individual rights
• Industrialisation, mass democracy, welfare states and the political power of workers
• Liberalism, populism and the changing relationship between elites and mass democracy
• The origins of international law in empire, property rights and global capitalism
• Why the postwar rules-based international order is now weakening
• The East India Company, Silicon Valley and the rise of quasi-sovereign corporate power
• China as an alternative model of state power and control over private capital
• Climate change, mass migration and whether the nation-state can survive a new ‘nomad century’

Find Rana on X: x.com/byranadasgupta

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small .

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