“Trump takes America’s trade policies back to the 19th century,” wrote The Economist on April 3, 2025, the day after the administration announced sweeping tariffs on nearly every product entering the U.S. Trade protectionism is back. This decision must frustrate all who believe in the benefits of free trade and the compelling formula promoted by economic liberals that every country will be better off if it specializes in what it does best and imports goods that others can produce more efficiently. The competing ideas of economic liberalism and neomercantilism may sound all too familiar to those interested in the field of International Political Economy (IPE). But, there is much more to learn about IPE when one delves into the discipline’s deeper history. Not everything is as clear-cut as it is sometimes presented; not everything that appears new has never been discussed before. In The Contested World Economy, Eric Helleiner presents an impressive array of thinkers to tell a comprehensive history of the pre-1945 roots of International Political Economy that aims to go beyond standard accounts. The book broadly accomplishes three things: First, it highlights the internal divisions in each of the perspectives discussed; second, it features many thinkers from world regions beyond Europe and the U.S., aiming to foster a more global conversation about IPE; and third, it expands the discussion beyond the three traditional schools of thought—liberalism, neomercantilism, and Marxism—that have long shaped the field.
The first part of the book, however, is organized around the three orthodoxies. For each school, one chapter focuses on the classical and foundational figures. The history of IPE, as told in the book, essentially starts with Smith’s publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. In that sense, Helleiner’s historical account is less radical than it sounds at first (the author himself acknowledges this). Much of this will be familiar to readers trained in IPE. For example, the first substantive chapter discusses classical liberalism and focuses heavily on Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, and Richard Cobden. Chapter 4 discusses the neomercantilist perspectives of Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List, and Henry Carey—a timely discussion in light of the contemporary resurgence of protectionism. We learn that Carey, a founding figure of the Republican Party, strongly emphasized the detrimental impact of free trade on specific societal groups, particularly local farmers and workers, whom he portrayed as the losers of free trade, being exploited by traders. He advocated for American trade protectionism as a means to foster the growth of national industries, aiming to support local workers through stable employment and rising wages (p. 66). The parallels to Trump’s economic stance are striking. Chapter 6 on Marxism covers the essence of Marx’s own writing on capitalism and class conflict, and Lenin’s theory of imperialism and capitalism. Some readers may feel that the classical accounts take up too much space in a text, which sets the goal of widening our perspective beyond conventional accounts. Still, these parts are informative and useful in setting the stage for what follows in the other chapters of the volume.
After each chapter on the “classics,” a second chapter discusses less familiar thinkers from around the world, most of whom have never been mentioned in the discipline’s leading textbooks. This approach seeks to fulfill the promise of offering a more global perspective. It allows Helleiner to show how original ideas were adapted to local circumstances. For instance, he explains how Olaudah Equiano, born in the Kingdom of Benin, adopted the free trade idea to argue for the end of slave trading (pp. 46–47). This approach also highlights parallel developments of thinking that were later attributed to the well-known classics alone. Examples include the Japanese Kōtoku Shūsui, who discussed the relationship between capitalism and war well before Lenin (p. 106), and the Chinese thinker Chen Hongmou, who proposed ideas similar to Smith’s around the same time.
The second part of the book looks beyond the three orthodoxies. It includes six chapters, each of which discusses a perspective that, according to the author, has been overlooked in conventional accounts of the discipline or is presented as being new thinking. These perspectives include economic self-sufficiency, environmentalism, feminism, Pan-Africanism, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Asianism, and early visions of regionalism. Helleiner argues that these were prominent debates prior to 1945 and asserts that a deeper understanding of the history of IPE requires a more thorough examination of these earlier views. Indeed, it may be illuminating, for example, to compare the concept of economic self-sufficiency discussed in Chapter 8 with contemporary degrowth ideas. Similarly, contrasting modern regionalism—such as that embodied in the European Union—with earlier, non-liberal versions of regionalism from the 1940s reveals stark differences. Examples discussed include the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere promoted by Japanese thinkers, as well as explicitly racist orders envisioned by German theorists during the Nazi regime.
What would the discipline of IPE and the world economy look like if these other theories had been more influential? Unfortunately, this is where Helleiner leaves the reader somewhat in the dark. The final part of the book offers some answers. Chapter 14 provides a new perspective on what is commonly defined as the founding moment of the modern global economic order, the Conference of Bretton Woods in 1944. The chapter’s main focus is showing that the architects at Bretton-Woods prioritized certain ideas, most importantly, an integrated global economy and multilateral institutions, and ignored others that were important at the time (visions of regionalism or national self-sufficiency). They also did not integrate environmental and social concerns, despite these issues having already been discussed among intellectuals, as well as in the context of establishing the International Labour Organization (ILO). Bretton Woods also widely neglected the views of thinkers from regions beyond Europe and the U.S. By emphasizing these choices, Helleiner shows that it is a particular version of the world economy that became dominant.
The Contested World Economy stands out for showcasing the diversity of scholars from around the world, the richness of their views and ideas—an achievement that deserves genuine praise. At the same time, the sheer volume of thinkers and ideas presented may feel overwhelming to readers. While the conclusions at the end of each chapter effectively summarize key concepts and their proponents, they often do little more than reiterate what has already been discussed. In the book’s weaker moments, Helleiner tends to add example after example, where a deeper engagement with his own interpretations would have been welcome—particularly in terms of how these perspectives expand, challenge, or enrich our understanding of contemporary IPE, or how they shaped or why they failed to shape the discipline more significantly.
That said, this is an outstanding contribution to reorienting our understanding of the history of IPE. It stands alongside The Making of Global International Relations by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan (2019, Cambridge University Press) in the field of International Relations, as both works seek to broaden historical narratives and foster global debates and conversations within their respective fields. The book reminds us that there “is much more than just thinkers from Europe and the United States and much more than a debate between just liberals, neomercantilists, and Marxists” (p. 269) and invites us to break with the “path-dependency” (p. 270) of telling the history of the world economy as we have done. The book invites us to reflect on what we know and do not know about IPE and reminds us of what we could know but ignore for some reason.
