The Hidden Globe

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World (2024) by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalistic account of the tax-free zones, unusual forms of sovereignty, and obscure marketplaces that underpin the neoliberal global economy. Abrahamian illustrates through on-the-ground reporting how these fragmented geographies and markets are exploited by private companies and depicts their impact on vulnerable populations. Abrahamian argues that these out-of-the-way places are essential to mitigating the tension between the globalized economy and nationalistic politics. 

Abrahamian is a multinational from Switzerland whose first book, The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen (2015), described how the market for passports among the wealthy elite was transforming the notion of citizenship itself. Abrahamian is a former editor for The Nation and Al-Jazeera American. Her reporting has been published in The Intercept, The New York Times, The Guardian, and elsewhere. 

Abrahamian’s research for this book was supported by a 2021 Silvers Award for Works in Progress and a 2022 Whiting Nonfiction Grant. 

This guide references the 2024 Riverhead Books Kindle edition of The Hidden Globe.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, death, sexual content, and animal cruelty.

Summary

Abrahamian introduces the concept of “the hidden globe”: places where the traditional notion of “one land, one law, one people, one government” does not apply (6). These are geographies where sovereignty is extended, transformed, occluded, or devolved; they are essential to the functioning of the capitalist economy in a globalized world. Abrahamian herself is from Geneva, an important node in the hidden globe nexus.

Switzerland has had a historically important role in global finance. The Swiss banking system, with its banking laws that prioritize secrecy and discretion, is “ground zero for this fractured atlas” (17). Abrahamian discusses the history of Switzerland’s role in global speculative capital, notably its sale of mercenary forces to foreign powers from the 14th century on, and its creation of a market for the sale and speculation on annuities taken out on bourgeois women in the 18th century. These elements of Swiss political economy are “a process of abstraction” that serve the “metaphysics of globalization” (31).

Abrahamian profiles several figures involved with the hidden globe. Controversial Swiss political figure Jean Ziegler has spent his life “relentlessly crusading for left-wing causes” (33), particularly advocating for greater transparency in the Swiss banking system, whose secrecy laws are used to launder funds and enable tax avoidance. Yves Bouvier, a former leader in the contemporary freeport market, transformed freeports from places used by merchants to store goods without paying import or export duties into locations where wealthy elites store valuables such as fine art without paying taxes on them. Frenchman Claude de Baissac spent the greater part of his career consulting on the creation of free-trade zones around the world: places where goods can be imported, exported, finished, manufactured, and traded without being subject to typical taxes, duties, or tariffs. Proponents of the practice argue that they spur economic development; critics feel that they are corporate welfare that does not benefit local populations.

A different part of the hidden globe is the charter city. First conceptualized by economist Paul Romer, these are cities that operate in a country while following the laws of a different country in order to spur economic growth and provide a place for migrants. One such city has been implemented by libertarians in Prospera, a small area on the island of Roatan in Honduras that is run by a private company. Abrahamian suggests that, while flawed, charter cities might be one way to address the migrant crisis. Matt Beer, an official at the court of the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), worked to set up a similar place in Kazakhstan. The DIFC is a court that hears cases from businesses located anywhere in the world, so long as they are registered with the DIFC—an example of the changing forms of jurisdiction in a globalized economy.

Abrahamian describes efforts to create a market for materials from outer space and the central role of the nation of Luxembourg in creating that market. She connects Luxembourg’s role in investing in the extraterrestrial market to its long history of juridical entrepreneurship, and its tendency to commercialize aspects of its sovereignty to raise funds. 

Abrahamian explores the topics of maritime sovereignty, flags of convenience, and migrant interdiction (the practice of intercepting, detaining, and/or returning migrants before they reach the destination country) via the biography of a single ship which began its life as the Gruziya in 1975 and ended it as the Titan in 2022. 

The hidden globe also affects marginalized communities. Sudanese activist Adbul Aziz Muhamat became a key organizer and spokesperson for those who were detained by Australian authorities in a migrant detention facility on the island of Manus in Papua New Guinea. Abrahamian explores the legal framework used by Australia to justify Aziz’s lengthy offshore detention under deplorable conditions. 

Boten is “a new city in a special economic zone on the border of Laos and China” (259). Although nominally in Laotian territory, the city is functionally under Chinese control, as it relies on China for electricity and communications. Boten was once largely run by a private management group who handled everything from tax collection to policing; when crime revolving around its casinos became too rampant, China rescinded the company’s license and Boten became a sleepy border town without a discernable identity.

Finally, Abrahamian describes Svalbard, a territory of Norway in the Arctic Circle. It is an open bordered territory: Anyone is permitted to live there, provided they can survive in the harsh weather. The legal history of Svalbard’s unique model of sovereignty focuses on American coal mining entrepreneur John Munro Longyear. 

Abrahamian concludes that we should consider new models of political economy beyond the traditional nation-state system in our globalized world.