How do international economic institutions justify meddling in sovereign states? As Jamie Martin argues in his new book, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, it’s not with the language of “coercion” but of “cooperation.”

Meddlers traces the history of Western infringement in the economies of non-Western sovereign states and the origins of the institutions that govern the global economy today. Although most often associated with bodies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, as Martin argues, the West began to create a global economy structured according to its interests well before World War II.

Martin’s account is well worth taking seriously, and not only because it allows us to expose the rhetoric of cooperation and development that justifies an exploitative and unequal international order. Indeed, to challenge capitalism on a local and national level, we need to understand how the capitalist class organizes and projects its power internationally.