The End of the Nation State?
2026-09-09
Where did the nation-state come from—and what happens if the conditions that made it powerful are now disappearing?
Thomas discusses these questions and much more in this wide-ranging Conflicted Conversation with award-winning novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta, whose new book After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order sets out to explain where our world order came from and where it could be going.
Rana explains:
The origins of the modern nation-state and the decline of universal sacred empires
Louis IX, the Crown of Thorns and the sacralisation of the French state
How Enlightenment political theology transformed God, sovereignty and individual rights
Industrialisation, mass democracy, welfare states and the political power of workers
Liberalism, populism and the changing relationship between elites and mass democracy
The origins of international law in empire, property rights and global capitalism
Why the postwar rules-based international order is now weakening
The East India Company, Silicon Valley and the rise of quasi-sovereign corporate power
China as an alternative model of state power and control over private capital
Climate change, mass migration and whether the nation-state can survive a new ‘nomad century’
Find Rana on X: x.com/byranadasgupta
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced and edited by Thomas Small .
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CONFLICTED
Message Heard- No. of episodes
- 242
- Latest episode
- 2026-10-15
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An ex-Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 spy and a former monk turned filmmaker, have been embedded at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East. Together Aimen Dean and Thomas Small unpack the realities of war, fundamentalism and their global implications through first-hand experience.