To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change

In a tempestuous narrative that sweeps across five continents and seven centuries, this book explains how a succession of catastrophes-from the devastating Black Death of 1350 through the coming climate crisis of 2050-has produced a relentless succession of rising empires and fading world orders.

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. I...