ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by looking at the historical emergence of international political economy (IPE). Mercantilism began to give way to economic liberalism during the industrial revolution and Britain's conversion to free trade. The chapter examines the evolution of the global economy. Although all countries retained some mercantilist practices and Marxism took root in the USSR after 1917, free-market capitalism dominated the global economy until the disaster of the Great Depression. The Asian contagion was a harbinger of a larger financial crisis that erupted in 2007 in the United States, rapidly becoming global in scope and posing the greatest global economic challenge since the Great Depression. The influence of Marxism was also apparent in the popularity of dependencia theory in Latin America between the 1960s and the 1980s. Transnational corporations (TNCs) like Newmont are major actors in the global economy, and the question of whether or not they are a positive force elicits heated debate.
