World government in fiction

In both science fiction and utopia/dystopian fiction, authors have made frequent use of the age-old idea of a global state and, accordingly, of world government.

In tune with Immanuel Kant's vision of a world state based on the voluntary political union of all countries of this planet in order to avoid colonialism and in particular any future war ("Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht", 1784; "Zum ewigen Frieden", 1795), some of these scenarios depict an egalitarian and utopian world supervised (rather than controlled) by a benevolent (and usually democratic) world government. Others, however, describe the effects of a totalitarian regime which, after having seized power in one country, annexes the rest of the world in order to dominate and oppress all mankind.

One major influence was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. The best-known advocate of world government was H. G. Wells. He describes such a system in The Shape of Things to Come, Men Like Gods and The World Set Free.

Some writers have also parodied the idea: E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops (1909) and Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World. Wells himself wrote The Sleeper Awakes, an early vision of a dystopian world.

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