World Financial Orders challenges the predominance of neo-liberalism as a mode of knowledge about contemporary world finance, and claims that it neglects the social and political bases as well as the malign consequences of change. He looks to the field of International Political Economy (IPE) to construct an alternative mode, one that critically restores society and politics. An 'historical' approach to IPE is advanced that accounts for modern world finance since the seventeenth century as a succession of structurally distinct hierarchical social orders. This book will be of interest to those working in the field of IPE and to those scholars, researchers and students from across the social sciences who seek to challenge the common-sense, neo-liberal explanation of contemporary world finance.