Introduction : getting in -- Winners and losers -- "Great because good" : a brief moral history of merit -- The rhetoric of rising -- Credentialism : the last acceptable prejudice -- Success ethics -- The sorting machine -- Recognizing work -- Conclusion.

This book brings together for the first time more than half a dozen proposals, including several which have never been studied before, to show how thinkers on empire drew on monetary thought and banking theory to address the financial, political and constitutional challenges of empire in the...