In this episode, I’m joined by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, author of The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (W.W. Norton, 2018), to discuss the complex and interconnected relationship between imperialism—both past and present—and global economic inequality. We examine why mainstream liberal frameworks for understanding the divide between rich and poor countries inevitably fall short, instead presenting an alternative account of global inequality that centers the crucial role of colonial plunder (as well as unequal exchange in the supposedly ‘postcolonial’ era) in keeping vast swaths of the world trapped in conditions of poverty, underdevelopment, and economic dependency.

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