To Govern the Globe

World Orders and Catastrophic Change

By: Alfred W. McCoy

Narrated by: Dan Woren

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. In a time when issues of race and social justice have arisen with pressing urgency, the book explains how the plantation’s extraordinary profitability relied on a production system that literally worked the slaves to death, creating an insatiable appetite for new captives that made the African slave trade a central feature of modern capitalism for over four centuries.

After surveying past centuries roiled by imperial wars, national revolutions, and the struggle for human rights, the closing chapters use those hard-won insights to peer through the present and into the future. By rendering often-opaque environmental science in lucid prose, the book explains how climate change and changing world orders will shape the life opportunities for younger generations, born at the start of this century, during the coming decades that will serve as the signposts of their lives—2030, 2050, 2070, and beyond.

©2021 Alfred McCoy (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

Alfred McCoy

Great read. Highly informational. Alfred McCoy describes global issues in such a linear, understandable, fashion. I greatly appreciate all the effort and research put into this book. Thank you!

Must-read

An incredible clear-sighted explanation of how we got here and what we need to get done to save ourselves and perhaps the planet. Definitely a must read.

Essential & Terrifying

McCoy presents a clear and comprehensive picture of how the 21st century will play out by putting it in its historical and ecological context. I wish his frame had been in the mainstream for the past 4 decades instead of the delusional nonsense I saw dominating discourse.

Now it looks like a metric ton of disruption and global suffering is baked in. Hopefully he's wrong. Very worth reading regardless.

Where we were and where we are headed...

An excellent, succinct interpretation and outlook as to where we are going as a human race with respect to who has ruled the planet and who will rule it.

Sweeping coverage of us on earth. Nice & Easy

Thought model, I can drop my renaissance, silk road, political & caveman books into !!

Comprehensive and deeply researched work

Remarkably sobering exposé. Author Alfred McCoy delved deeply into historical cycles to bring us to our present most critical and challenging times and the dangers humanity confronts.

Fascinating and devastating

I didn't know anything about world orders, and this was my introduction to that topic. almost all the book is a history lesson until it gets to a present and in the future both of those just at the end of the book.

Reality, less a detail or two. Still.

Missing: 2016, Obama/HRC/"D"NC/"Democratis"/ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS; i.e., The Oligarchs vs Bernie Sanders/The Citizens/The World. Result? Angry Voters; Trump.

Eye opening!

Never once did I consider the impact of global warming to mass migration to global order and US politics. Nor the human rights considerations that are owed to those that need to migrate because we cannot curb emissions fast enough. Nor for that matter that Putin and China could use global warming to create instability to recast global warming? Could it be Putin’s intent to create another nuclear spill in Ukraine to scare the western world from expanding Nuclear energy initiatives so they continue to increase carbon initiatives?