Empty Vessel

A fascinating history of the world economy over the last fifty years told through the life of a single ship, from a brilliant young historian.

Capitalism. International law. Imperial decline. National sovereignty. Inflation. Sectoral stagnation. Gentrification. Mass incarceration. Booms. Busts. Racism. Greed. Empty Vessel is the story of globalism in one boat. First built as a Swedish offshore oil rig in the 1970s, it went on to house British soldiers in the Falklands War in the 1980s, prisoners from Riker’s Island in New York’s East River in the 1990s, Volkswagen factory employees in Germany in the 2000s, and Nigerian oil workers off the coast of Africa in the 2010s. In each of its lives it arrived as an empty vessel, filled at the behest of both public and private interests, for purposes of war, incarceration, and commerce – connecting people thousands of miles apart, all shaped by the same global economic transformations. So much of our global economy is composed of specific innovations, decisions, and human experiences as concrete as the barnacles scraped off a hull. Through this party boat, prison, oil rig and war vessel. Empty Vessel reveals this economy to us – and warns of its troubling consequences.