In a popular 2020 Memo, I wrote about Kiril Sokoloff, “the greatest investor you’ve never heard of”.

Sokoloff, whose aristocratic father fled the Russian Revolution to make a new life in the U.S is a big student of history. His company 13D Global Research & Strategy publishes a paid newsletter, What I Learned This Week, that zooms out to make sense of big trends for investors.

Subscribers received a recent report with an intriguing title: “The Alliance of the Aggrieved and the Resurgence of the Colonized.” It’s about the emergence of what the authors argue is a new, multipolar world order. Some key points:

The great-power political theorist John Mearsheimer believes that there are only three basic world orders: 

1) Unipolar - think the Roman Empire and British Empire in their heydays, and the era following the fall of the Soviet Union; 2) Bipolar - the Cold War period, with the U.S. and the Soviet Union vying for influence; and 3) Multipolar, which we now seem to be entering.

Unipolar eras are marked by their stability, relative peace, and economic growth. Bipolar eras also tend to be stable, even if there are tensions. But multipolar periods are inherently unstable, bringing with them often shocking and unexpected events.

When we say “multipolar world”, it does not just mean a troubled United States or a rising China. There are several long term historical trends playing out. A big, underrated one is the backlash from previously colonized countries.

In the period 1AD-1820 AD, India and China were the two largest economies in the world, with a combined share of total world GDP of 23-25%.

This changed dramatically with European colonialism. In its wake, India and China (the latter never a 'colony' but dominated by foreign powers) were left with a combined total of only 5% of world GDP. That's a dramatic reduction in terms of living standards, power, and influence.

This basic fact continues to leave a bad taste for the victims of colonization and imperialism.