Empty Vessel

The rise of globalization and financialization as seen from a bargeone Swedish barge, to be exact, built in 1979

What do a barracks for British troops in the Falklands War, a floating jail off the Bronx, and temporary housing for VW factory workers in Germany have in common? The Balder Scapa: a single barge that served all three roles. Though the name would eventually change to Finnboda 12. And then to Safe Esperia. And later on, to the Bibby Resolution. And after that . . . in short, a vessel with so many names, and so many fates, that to keep it in our sightsas the protagonist of this fascinating economic parableIan Kumekawa has no choice but to call it, simply, the Vessel.

Despite its sturdy steel structure, weighing 9,500 deadweight tons, the Vessel is a figure as elusive and abstract as the offshore market it comes to embody: a world of island tax havens, exploited labor forces, free banking zones, Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and mass incarceration, where even the prisoners are held offshore. Fitted with modular shipping containers, themselves the product of standardized global trade, the ship could become whatever the market demanded. Whether caught in an international dispute involving Hong Kong, Nigeria, Indonesia, and the Virgin Islandsto be settled in an English court of lawor flying yet another foreign "flag of convenience" to mask its ownershipthe barge is ever a container for forces much larger than even its hulking self.

Empty Vessel is a jaw-dropping microhistory that speaks volumes about the global economy as a whole. In following the Vesseland its Sister Vessel, built alongside it in Stockholmfrom one thankless task to the next, Kumekawa connects the dots of a neoliberal world order in the making, where regulation is for suckers and "Made in USA" feels almost quaint.

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