Modern Europe Colloquium | Guarding Growth: Private Security and the State in the Postwar

The Modern Europe Colloquium presents Ian Kumekawa, an Anniversary Fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and a Lecturer in History at MIT, on "Guarding Growth: Private Security and the State in the Postwar" Bio: My second book, Empty Vessel, which came out with Knopf and John Murray in 2025, was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and Kirkus. My third book, The Business State, is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press. I obtained my PhD in History at Harvard University in 2020, my MPhil at the University of Cambridge in 2013 and my A.B. at Harvard College in 2012. My work focuses on the history of economic thinking, imperial statecraft, and global capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries. I am also interested in the history of bureaucracy and the digital humanities, especially network visualizations. The Modern Europe Colloquium is generously sponsored by the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund; and the European Studies Council of the Yale MacMillan Center