The Hidden Globe

Borders draw one map of the world money draws another. A journalists riveting account exposes a parallel universe exempt from the laws of the land and reveals how it became a haven for the rich and powerful. The map of the globe shows the world we think we know: sovereign nations that grant and restrict their citizens rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside its neatly delineated borders, however, a parallel universe has been engineered into existence, consisting of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, increasingly for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Atossa Abrahamian traces the the rise of the hidden globe to thirteenthcentury Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed the commodity they hadbodies, in the form of mercenary fighters. Following its evolution around the world, she reveals how prizewinning economists, eccentric theorists, visionary statesmen, and consultants masterminded its export in the form of free trade zones, flags of convenience, offshore detention centers where immigrants languish in limbo, and charter cities controlled by foreign corporationsand even into outer space, where tiny Luxembourg aspires to mining rights on asteroids. By mapping the hidden geography that decides who wins and who loses in this new global orderand how it might be otherwiseThe Hidden Globe fascinates, enrages, and inspires.