The Hidden Globe
Borders draw one map of the world; money draws another. A journalist’s riveting account exposes a parallel universe that has become a haven for the rich and powerful.
A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity: bodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Over time, economists, theorists, statesmen, and consultants evolved ever more sophisticated ways of exporting and exploiting statelessness, in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers, charter cities controlled by foreign corporations, and even into outer space. By mapping this countergeography, which decides who wins and who loses in the new global order—and helping us to see how it might be otherwise—The Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.
“The Hidden Globe’ ranges far beyond obscured transactions and nested shell companies to much weirder patterns of jurisdictional flexibility. These domains are populated and furnished with ‘legal fictions’… Abrahamian’s most riveting excursus tells the story of a Soviet vessel that was launched from a Finnish shipyard in 1975….Abrahamian is…an honest and curious reporter, and her eye for systems makes her reluctant to assign blame in a simplistic way…Abrahamian is alert to the poignant ironies at play when the leaders of an impoverished former colony recognize that their only real leverage abroad lies in their ability to compromise their power at home… Abrahamian is careful to point out that there are plenty of instances in which legal exemptions served righteous purposes…One of the things that make ‘The Hidden Globe’ more than a political jeremiad is Abrahamian’s interest in the actual people—the economists and management consultants—who designed the architecture of these liminal bailiwicks. Many of them, she shows, were well intended in their efforts to forge alternatives to competitive nationalism, even if they didn’t do much to shore up the sorts of institutions that argued on behalf of global solidarity…These elements of the book feel personal, if guardedly so. The figures Abrahamian profiles frequently mirror her own preference for dislocation…What bothers Abrahamian, in the end, isn’t the anarchic but the unfair; if capital is free, people deserve the same respect…Abrahamian often returns to Geneva as the nexus of the book. It is a city evenly divided between those who prop up the internationalist institutions of humanitarian concern and those who brazenly flout them, where U.N. workers live cheek by jowl with clandestine bankers. How can a place be at once so cosmopolitan and so parochial? This is, for Abrahamian, a ‘microcosm’ of our contemporary paradox…One of the subtler themes of Abrahamian’s book is her understanding of the hidden globe’s denizens as not just wealthy individuals but parties to a tribe of elevated hunter-gatherers. They are united in their prerogatives.”
“The history of such locales is detailed vividly in ‘The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World,’ a…very worthwhile new book by the journalist Atossa Araxia Abrahamian… In the hands of a lesser writer, this material could be dreadfully tedious. But Abrahamian populates her book with sharply drawn characters… Her interviews with the men and women who helped engineer some of these places lead to some engaging debates…Abrahamian wears her left-wing politics openly and finds much to criticize in the places she profiles. But she refuses to simply condemn them either…Instead, she’s aiming at a broader intellectual and moral point…the book left me experiencing a small aha feeling about Trump’s plans. The former president has said he intends to build a ring around the country with punitively high tariffs, while carving out his manufacturing zones. In doing so, he’d be essentially reverse engineering the United States to look more like the kinds of desperate, developing economies that have historically traded a bit of their sovereignty away in the name of growth…Abrahamian’s book is not specifically about Trump. But depending on how the election shakes out, it could turn out to be a timely warning.”
“One interesting argument Abrahamian makes is that these exceptional areas came about as imperialism was declining; in some respects, they represent a less conspicuous form of colonialism…. Abrahamian’s interviews with the people — the vast majority of them men — who helped develop and run these special economic zones provide a window into how just a few economists and consultants could change the way countries around the world operate.”
—The New York Times
“You might think a history of tax havens would be dull but ‘The Hidden Globe’ is luminous….A brilliant expose of international tax havens reveals how the ruling class shapes our world…In her stellar work of literary journalism, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian peels back murky history and legalese to expose the machinations of these enclaves, how they thrive beyond the reach of laws, sovereign unto themselves. Come for Switzerland, stay for Singapore — the sun never sets on this grift… ‘The Hidden Globe’ could easily have been a litany of malfeasance and wonky woes, and still contributed to debates surrounding equity and the future. Abrahamian’s artistic touch imbues the dry bits with shine and movement. She peoples her narrative with the famous and infamous, cameos from Mary Shelley and Che Guevara to Etienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s former deputy prime minister…A season of unrest looms ahead, and ‘The Hidden Globe’ lays out the unvarnished truth in a luminous feat of reportage.”
—– Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“There are the maps of the world that everyone knows. The images of the world with borders, oceans and seas, cities and towns. And then there are the maps of the world that few will ever see—the complex world of free trade zones and freeports, flags of convenience and extraterritoriality. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explores this ‘counter–geography’…which looks to expose the way in which wealth flows around the world outside of the public’s view.”
—Diplomatic Courier
“Sharply observed… Abrahamian unravels the opaque world of ‘special economic zones’ and other places…where national and economic boundaries are blurred… Abrahamian also considers trendy concepts like ‘charter cities,’ noting, ‘To cede this territory to rigidly ideological capitalists alone would be a big mistake.’…Her well-researched, engrossing work manages the minutiae of several fields, including telecommunications, maritime law, and fine art, to stitch together a multilayered tale of how privilege works to protect itself. Important documentation of how mechanisms favored by the 1 percent increase global inequalities.”
—Kirkus
“A revelatory look… Abrahamian begins by delving into the histories of contemporary tax havens…but her scope is far broader… Providing poetic insight…Abrahamian, who perceptively analyzes these zones as neither ‘all good, nor all evil,’ but as ‘cracks’ that reveal how the world really works. It’s an impressive achievement.”
— Publishers Weekly, Starred review
“Fascinating—reads like a novel yet packs a policy punch for anyone interested in global migration, licit and illicit corporate networks, legal fictions and realities, and the ongoing mutation of the nation-state. Read it, share it, and above all, reflect on the paradox that while we grapple with how to exert physical control over the digital world, we ignore the creation of vast new legal and physical spaces in plain sight.”
—Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America, and Professor and Dean Emerita, Princeton University
“The Hidden Globe eloquently verifies a long-inarticulate suspicion: that our world has been invisibly remade. Traveling to different parts of the world, Abrahamian describes insidiously interconnected global regimes of inequality and injustice. In the process, she boldly renews our sense of reality and brilliantly illuminates our political impasse.”
—Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of Anger
“Although we imagine the world as divided neatly into nation-states, it is in fact strewn with loopholes, islands, freeports, and zones where the usual laws don’t apply. Such places matter enormously. Abrahamian is the ideal guide—fluid, sharp-eyed, and thoughtful—to this hidden landscape.”
—Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire