Kees van der Pijl is the director of the Centre of Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex. His earlier books include The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (1984) and Transnational Classes and International Relations (1998). He is currently working on a project entitled “Tribal and Imperial Antecedents of Contemporary Foreign Relations”. Thus, he straddles the disciplines of Global Political Economy and International Relations; and makes valid connections between the two.
The book under review is a path-breaking analysis of the history of wars and global political economy in the past century; and how these have shaped the relations and rivalries between/among political entities.