Jumping Boats: InterAsian Wealth-Making and Social Protection after Globalization

Engseng Ho argues that the post-Cold War era of globalization — built on American-guaranteed security and self-regulating free markets — is ending, as the second Trump administration shifts from global protector to predator (Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Greenland), collapsing the separation of politics from economics. As top-level global guarantees crumble, it's worth turning to the deeper, historically embedded layer of "InterAsia": the centuries-old web of mobile merchant societies (Arab, Persian, Malabari, Tamil, Malay, Bugis, Hokkien Chinese) who, unlike gun-bearing European traders, embedded th