Emergence of The International System-59727272

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Avipsu Halder is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Calcutta.
He completed his PhD from Centre for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament Studies
(CIPOD), Jawaharlal Nehru University. His doctoral thesis was on “States, markets and Sports in the
Global Era: International Political economy of cricket and football”. His area of research includes
Globalisation, Theories of International Relations, International Political Economy.
Divya Balan is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Department of Social Science,
School of Liberal Education, FLAME University, Pune. She has been teaching for the past six years,
formerly in Delhi University and Central University of Kerala before joining FLAME. She has received
her Doctoral Degree in European Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her areas
of research/teaching interests are Theories of International Relations, History of International System,
the European Union, International and Domestic Migration, Indian Diaspora and Gender.
Frank Lekaba is a Researcher in the Governance and Security Unit, Africa Institute of South Africa
in Human Sciences Research Council. He holds BA in Peace Studies and International Relations, and
Master of Social Science in International Relations from the North West University. Currently he is
pursuing his PhD at the Department of Politics, University of Johannesburg. His areas of research
interest are transformation of global governance institutions, South Africa’s foreign policy analysis,
African Continental Integration.
Hina Pandey is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS), New Delhi. Her
project titled, “Iran’s Nuclear Programme: From Proliferation Crisis to Non-Proliferation Promise” attempts
to analyse various facets of the landmark P5+1 & Iranian Nuclear Deal from the non-proliferation
perspective. She is pursuing her doctorate from the same division. She has also presented her views
in workshops and conferences organised by institutes such as IISS-INENS, Carniege, Stimsom Center,
ii  CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Tsingua University, Wilson Center- RomaTre etc. Her research interests include nuclear security issues,
non-proliferation, nuclear energy politics and US-India relations.
Kasturi Chatterjee completed her PhD from the Centre for International Politics, Organisation &
Disarmament, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral thesis was on the politics of state apologies,
seeking to explore why some states appear more willing to say sorry for their violent pasts while some
states do not. Her previous academic work has included publications and presentations on political
apologies, genocide denial, and the history of genocides. Since January 2017, she has taught Political
Science at Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi.
Madhumita Das is an Assistant Professor at the Jindal Global School of Law, OP Jindal Global
University, Sonipat. She has previously worked at FLAME University, Pune. Her training has been
in Political Science (BA- Jadavpur University), Peace and Conflict Studies (MA-Jamia Millia Islamia),
and International Politics (MPhil & PhD- Jawaharlal Nehru University). Her interest in studying the
relationship between power, justice, and legitimacy across time and space has guided her research on
Northeast India, Naga and Kashmiri national movements, Indian Foreign Policy, and South Asia. Her
theoretical interests lie in International Relations Theory, Political Thought, Indigenous, Decolonial
and Border Studies.
Mehak Kapur is currently pursuing her studies in International Relations: Global Governance
and Social Theory at a Joint Programme between Jacobs University and University of Bremen
in Bremen, Germany. She obtained her Master’s degree in International Relations/Political
Science from the Graduate Institute of International Relations and Development Studies
in Geneva, Switzerland and her undergraduate degree in B.A. (Hons.) Political Science
from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. Her areas of interest include
Foreign Policy Analysis, Political Psychology and Social Theory in International Relations.
Shambhawi Tripathi is a research scholar at the Centre for International Politics, Organization and
Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New
Delhi. She completed her Master’s degree in Politics with specialisation in International Relations at
JNU. Her research interests include critical international relations theory, critical security studies in
areas of climate, refugees and terrorism and anthropological/sociological research in International
Relations. She has presented and received awards for her articles at the Indian Council for Philosophical
Research and the Indian Council of World Affairs.
Siddharth Tripathi is a Post doctoral researcher at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, University
of Erfurt, Germany. He was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Lady Shri
Ram College for Women (LSR), University of Delhi. He also facilitated courses and coordinated the
diploma programme on Conflict Transformation and Peace Building at the Aung San Suu Kyi Centre
for Peace at LSR. He completed his PhD at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University. His areas of interest include Norms in IR, Political Psychology, Institutional Learning,
Security Sector Reform, European Studies and India’s Foreign Policy.
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS  iii
Sneha Banerjee is currently a Post doctoral fellow at the ISEK - Institut für Sozialanthropologie
und Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, University of Zurich, Switzerland. She completed her PhD at
the Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University. She was a University Grants Commission Junior Research Fellow (UGC-JRF)
from 2010-15. She has also taught Political Science to undergraduate students at the University of
Delhi during 2012-13. Her broad research interests include feminist explorations of ‘new’ forms of
embodied labour in a globalised political economy.
Sreeparna Dasgupta is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Loreto College,
Kolkata. She is pursuing her PhD on India’s China Policy in the 21st Century in the Department of
Political Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata. Some of her publications include The Emerging Geo-
Strategic Environment of the Asian Pacific: China’s Rise and India’s Search for Security in Perspectives:
Asia – Pacific: The Sixth Biennial International Conference of the Indian Association for Asian and
Pacific Studies, Mahabodhi Book Agency, Kolkata 2014 and India’s Defence Strategy vis-à-vis China:
The British Legacy and its Relevance in Geeta Kochhar and Pramod Jaiswal (ed.), Unique Asian
Triangle: India-China–Nepal, G.B. Books, New Delhi, 2016.
Sriparna Pathak is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, Gauhati
University. She is also a Fellow at the South Asia Democratic Forum, Brussels. Previously she was
a Consultant in the Policy Planning and Research Division of the Ministry of External Affairs, New
Delhi. She received her PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has spent two years
in Beijing as an Advanced Research Scholar on a joint scholarship from the Ministry of Human
Resources Development, India and the China Scholarship Council. She has written extensively on
China’s economy, India- China relations and Chinas international relations in books, journals, and
national dailies.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AGOA Africa Growth and Opportunity Act

ANC African National Congress
AU African Union
BISA British International Studies Association
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
BTTC BRICS Think Tank Council
CODESA Congress for Democratic South Africa
CPEC China- Pakistan Economic Corridor
EU European Union
FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association
ICC International Criminal Court
IMF International Monetary Fund
INGO International Non-Governmental Organisation
IR International Relations
ISA International Studies Association
ISIS Indian School of International Studies
JAIR Japan Association of International Relations
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
OBOR One Belt One Road
vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
PCA Permanent Court of Arbitration

SCO Shanghai Cooperation
SIS School of International Studies
SSA Sub-Saharan Africa
TAN Transnational Advocacy Network
THAAD Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission
UK United Kingdom
UN United Nations
UNSC United Nations Security Council
USA United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republic
EmErgEncE of thE IntErnatIonal SyStEm
Madhumita Das
IntroductIon
The discipline of International Relations presupposes the existence of an International System.

It tries to understand and explain the nature, trends, and operating logics of this system through
history, theory, modelings, sociological, and anthropological inquiry. Over and above this, some
argue, the discipline of international relations also works to perpetuate the system (Walker 2010).
There must, therefore, be something atypical about it. We could say that the international system is
not just about recurring, dynamic, and interlocking factors, but also that it requires founding myths,
supporting structures, and self-serving logics.
In our day and age, the international system is predicated upon certain assumptions that have,
through their very self-perpetuation acquired the status of facts. The most important among these
‘facts’ are that the territory (and some water) of the planet is divided into political entities called
States, that between them, exhaust most land. This corresponds to the ways of knowing the world
like the globe, the Atlas and maps that we have grown up with, and have taken for granted. We
also call these entities Nation-States, or often, Nations. They refer to political formations that have
certain common minimum characteristics. The next section discusses some of these characteristics,
which underpin the current international system. An appreciation of these characteristics will allow
us to understand the account of the emergence of the system.
AnArchy And the SovereIgn PrerogAtIve
The first and central characteristics the territorial sovereignty of states. The term sovereignty can
have a wide range of meanings, but minimally, in this context, it is an accepted practice through states
do not interfere in the internal affairs of other states, and have protection from such interference
2  INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS TODAY
themselves. Such sovereignty presupposes the monopoly of power, also translated as the monopoly
of violence- internally- over the complete territory claimed by the state.
Second, a sovereign state legitimates its monopoly of power through the people residing within
the territory of the state. Contemporary norms of the international system deem that such legitimation
is secured through the wishes of the people concerned. There is however, no sovereign supra-state
authority, no final arbiter that can coerce a state to always respect the wishes of its entire people
within. Thus we can see that the contemporary international system consists of the interplay of states,
sovereignty, territory, people, and power; the state being the ultimate repository of all the other factors.
The third notable characteristic of the international state system is a similarity across states. This
similarity is an imposed one, by the system itself. The lack of a supra-state authority to enforce a
monopoly of violence, power and legitimacy over the constituent states, leads at least one influential
theorist to describe the international system as ‘anarchic’ (Waltz, 2000: 10). Thus, states might be
extremely varied in their internal characteristics- (their styles of government, their founding principles,
and their methods to secure legitimacy and maintain their sovereignty) but externally they are deemed
to be ‘functionally similar’. In an anarchic environment, the functional similarity is that of ‘survival’.
It is a fundamental universal aspiration, the lowest common denominator, on which all politicking
is predicated.
Moreover, conventional wisdom has it that any difference between states at the systemic level
is one of the ‘capability’ to survive (and not the substance of the survival) (Waltz, 1979: 96). It is
interesting to note that sovereignty protects only the right to exist only in the case of an already
existing state, not any entity struggling to become a state. This lends a strong force of permanency
in the status quo of the international system. All other attempts like collective security measures,
transnational linkages, cooperation in international organisations are subordinate to the principle of
sovereignty in an anarchical international system
And yet, the world we inhabit today does not merely witness relations between states conducted
through the expected means of foreign policy, diplomacy, regional governance, or war. Nor do
international and regional organisations exhaust the range of ways in which a collective of states
can police, coerce and discipline other states in order to adhere to the existing system, anarchic as
it is. States and their sovereignty are challenged in a myriad number of ways, and these ways are as
significant factors in the international system. The most expected challenge to sovereignty comes from
globalisation- a term we will discuss in depth in subsequent chapter. But there are other ways too.
Notwithstanding external sovereignty, states, can and do intervene in each other’s territory in
ways short of war. Notwithstanding internal sovereignty, states can and do intervene in the internal
affairs of other states, whether it be to change ‘unfavourable’ regimes, or to fan ‘separatism’. And
notwithstanding the states’ ability to maintain its sovereignty by exercising a monopoly of power,
resistance movements, national movements, and secessionist movements continue not just to exist,
but to flourish within and across states. To add to the mix, the existence of non-state actors and
transnational actors challenge and undermine the sovereignty of states. At times it is in collusion
with other states or sometimes singly, in a mind-boggling number of ways from terrorism to climate
EMERGENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM  3
activism, to the indigenous peoples discourse. In short, ‘politics as usual’, is rapidly becoming just
one of the many ways in which politics in the international system takes place.
We could argue that the international system can be understood as a space where states, non-state
actors, and regional organisations exist, and interact in accordance with the principle of sovereignty,
in a condition of anarchy. The nature of the system predisposes it to favour states and status quoist
forces, rewards survival and self-interest over individual, collective and planetary rights, or over
concerns of sustainability. And yet, the current international system is not just a bleak and regressive
arena for the machinations of power by self-serving states, but is also shaped by a large range of
communitarian, transnational, human concerns. If survival is the minimum impetus for interaction,
there is also considerable socialisation of states to expand their notion of self-interest, and work
collectively for the common gain.1
In this chapter, we journey historically, sociologically, and critically towards the contemporary
international state system, to understand not just the way it is, but how it came to be this way. This
knowledge is required, most importantly to navigate through international politics with finesse, both
as a scholar and practitioner. But it also enables us to reflect upon forces of change and disruptive
phenomena; to identify them and to follow their implications for the existing system. In recent
times large-scale unexpected changes have swept over the world, the liberal, cosmopolitan, ‘end of
history’ thesis (Fukuyama 2002) is being challenged by particularisms everywhere, and words like
‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative-facts’ have entered mainstream lexicon. This necessitates an inquiry into
the international state system.
The following sections while proceeding chronologically will focus rather on the dominant features
of each era. It is essential to be mindful of the entrenched Eurocentrism inour current understanding
and knowledge of the international system, and the following sections will accordingly take note of
the distortions and erasures. It, however, does not attempt to present an alternative historical and
sociological narrative. Not only is it beyond the ambit of this chapter, but more importantly, the
diversity of experiences from Africa, Arabia, Asia, to South America, that shaped both Europe and
the international system do not lend themselves easily to a grand narrative. By examining the grand
narrative of European origins of the international system, this chapter attempts to critically engage
the reader with the idea of the development of the international system.
InterrogAtIng FoundIng MythS: the WeStPhAlIAn order
Central to the dominant accounts of the emergence of the system is the Treaty of Westphalia of
1648. It marked the end of the Thirty years wars (1618-1648) within the Holy Roman Empire, and
the Eight-Years War between the Dutch and Spanish Republics. The Holy Roman Empire (800-1806),
that in the astute observation of Voltaire was, “neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire” (Voltaire
1759) was the last in line of many versions of the ‘Roman period’ in European history beginning
from 753 BC. The city-state traditions of Greece, Persia, and Mesopotamia that preceded Rome, and
which were at the height of their power and influence at approximately 400 BC, bear much likeness
to the current system. These city-states were sovereign; the regimes had a semblance of democracy
and there was a considerable separation between religious and political life. The logic of power and
the elaboration of the ‘balance-of-power’ during this period are recorded famously in ‘A History of
the Peloponnesian War’, between Athens and Sparta (431-404 BC), by Thucydides, and forms an
integral part of the epistemology of the discipline of International Relations.
It was the realm of Rome, however, that saw the creation of a unique political system in Europe-
that of the Empire.2 The growth and spread of Christianity and the Empire went lock-in-step and
achieved its zenith during the various Crusades against the Arab, Byzantine and Ottoman religious
regimes. However, the internal tensions between religious and temporal authority affected the Empire
from within for at least three centuries, and culminated in the Thirty Years War (Mingst, 1999: 18-26).
There are a few outstanding reasons given for popularly referring the present international system
as the Westphalian world order. First, Westphalia signalled new ways of making peace in the midst
of war-through diplomacy and collective decision making. Second, it led to the first profound break
between religion and politics, at least, in the late-medieval/ early modern period. The temporal king
was now the sovereign of the kingdom, and decided the denomination of Christianity (in principle
of any religion) that his state would endorse. This paved the way for the delinking of religion and the
state, and the subsequent emergence of nationalism as the unifying force for people within a state.
Third, the principle of sovereignty would mean that all kingdoms now had the right to exist through
mutual recognition, and adhere to the norm of non-interference. This led to the formation of many
small states in Europe and most insist that it also led to the birth of the modern international system.
This account, however, needs to be critically interrogated on at least two grounds. First, the claim
that the principle of sovereignty was a result of debate and discussion of participants in the Treaty,
and as such was the creation of statesmen. It was not considered to be due to internal organic, social,
and even technological factors within these political entities. Disputing the birth of the modern state
to the stroke of Westphalia, Benno Teschke traced it instead to the advent of modernity, the rise and
growth of capitalism,3 and the change in social property relations inside Britain. These transitions
had both a demonstrative as well as a coercive effect on the rest of Europe (Teschke, 2005). This
difference in account is seemingly technical- an attribution of the development of the international
state system to ‘internal’ rather than ‘external’ causes. However, for a discipline committed to focus
on and attribute international dynamics to action ‘between’ and not ‘within’ states, this has profound
implications.
Second, as explained before, the entire edifice of constructing an account of the international
system rooted in Europe and radiating outwards from there requires serious reconsideration. It is
undeniable that consolidation of modernity, scientific and technological progress, industrialization,
and capitalism, had made it possible for Europe to colonise other lands, and augment and consolidate
its own power. Generations of compelling postcolonial scholarship has shown how the presence of
the ‘second’ and ‘third’ worlds are in fact shaped by the sweeping political, economic, and social
changes brought upon them by force and coercion of the ‘first world’ states, especially those of the
European continent (Fanon, 1967; Said, 1978; Mbembe, 2010; Seth 2011, et. al).
The advent of colonialism changed the characters of the extant European Empires. They became
territorially non-contiguous and developed more elaborate and flexible arrangements of sharing and
devolving power. Eventually, the principle of sovereignty would lead to the end of the age of Empire,
conventionally understood.4 However, as we shall see in the following section, the international
system was not merely shaped by the extension, retraction and universalisation of European politics.
The conquered lands and their politics also significantly shaped their colonisers, and in turn, the
international system.
ModernIty And colonIAlISM: one WAy Street or A FeedbAck looP?
The peace ushered by Westphalia freed Emperors, Kings and Princes within their Empires to
consolidate absolute power within their territories.This also led to the simultaneous emergence of a
network of powerful cities, distinguished by flourishing trade, cultural, religious and racial exchanges.
Those features - diplomacy, taxation, rule of law, and the sheltering of foreigners, that are a hallmark
of modern states developed around the renewed city states of Florence, Geneva (Genoa), London and
the likes (Sassen, 2006: 67-70). These became centers where the Renaissance ethic, and the Renaissance
man flourished; where the individual came to his own through a profound, almost spiritual humanism
(the individual man that is- the prospect of the flourishing of the second sex was still a long way
off); where reason, criticism, and the telos of progress broke away from the fatalism of the Church;
where scientific temperament developed increasingly unfettered (Gillen and Ghosh, 2007: 8-25).
The post-Renaissance period saw a flurry of innovation in European socio-political and economic
spheres that were to have a lasting impact on the current order. On the one hand, Niccolo Machiavelli
(1995) advised the Prince of Florence in the ancient art of control and domination, on the other Jean
Bodin (1992) in France, and Thomas Hobbes (1998) in England developed the philosophical bases of
the imperative of sovereignty. Not much later, Ricardo (1912) and Adam Smith (2000) would capture
the imagination of the times by placing their pulse on the (now disputable and disreputable) logic of
mercantilism, open-markets, free-trade, the invisible hand, and trickle-down economics. It seemed like
Europe was finally moving away from the all-encompassing grip of the Church. Though Max Weber
saw in this growing spirit of capitalism merely a consolidation of the Protestant ethic (Weber ,1958).
It is not ironic then that these centres of progress would be the ones from which men scoured
the lands of the Earth towards the East (Asia) and the South (Africa). While trade, the sourcing of
raw materials, and the selling of finished goods motivated these sojourns, these were almost always
accompanied by the mission of bringing both civilisation and the word of God upon ‘barbarians’; a
cross that would be borne as the ‘white-man’s burden’ (Kipling ,1899). The other end of the bargain
is succinctly summarised in the famous maxim, “When the missionaries came to Africa they had
the Bible and we had the land. They said ‘let us pray’. We closed our eyes. When we opened them,
we had the Bible and they had the land” (Hochhuth, 1964: 144).
Conventional wisdom about the emergence of the international system considers colonialism as
marginal to its accounts. At best, colonialism allowed non-European parts of the world to be schooled
in the European ‘innovations’ of liberalism, democracy and civilisation, which would eventually
prepare them for being full and responsible members of the international system, i.e. to make the
shift from pre-modern to modern. At worst, colonialism impeded and delayed the natural destinies
of these lands and polities.5
Both accounts overlook the possibility and fact of the colonial enterprise being an exchange,
however unequal. That the political, economic and social systems of the colonised lands, the invaded
civilisations, had as much a role to play in shaping not just their own present, but also the present of
Europe itself. John Hobson, for example presents an important alternate account of the rise of Europe.
It was predicated, he argues, on the technological innovations from China as against developments
completely within Europe, and on forcefully acquired trading rights through imperialism and not
on the logic of free trade based on ideas of justice. Most importantly, numerous cultural, social,
philosophical, and even political innovations that spurred Europe’s rise to dominance in the 17th
and 18th centuries were borrowed from Eastern civilisations, kingdoms, and religions (Hobson 2004).
Similar accounts can be found of the interaction of Europe with South American, South Asian, and
much later, African socio-political landscapes (Strang, 1992; Mbembe, 2010). Moreover, three centuries
before the eastward colonial project, the European colonization of the North American continent,
composed of a rich and complex Indian tribal polities, and the subsequent revolt of the colony from
its British metropole, formed the basis for the modern United States of America (Bancroft, 1966).
An interrogation of the precise ways in which these exchanges took place, as explained earlier,
is outside of the scope of this chapter (it is dealt in the chapter on Eurocentrism further in this
volume. It can be argued, however, that the emergence of the international system is a result of
a series of dynamic interactions of power at multiple levels, between the West and the non-West.
Moreover, it is this two way interaction, and not the one way expansion of the Western prototype
of the sovereign state (in both its external and internal dynamics), that explains why most regions
and states of the contemporary world are socialised to aspire towards, or at least imitate Europe, but
they almost never end up doing so (Kaviraj, 2005). Thus, an appreciation of the agency of the various
non-western political landscapes, sensitivity to the actual history helps us understand the deviations
from the ‘politics as usual’ that increasingly characterises the contemporary system.
FroM eMPIreS to StAteS, nAtIon-StAteS, And nAtIonS
Post Westphalia, two disparate processes went hand in hand- the onward trajectory of sovereignty
in Europe, and the unequal ways in which the world was brought closer through colonialism. These
phenomena, however, on their own do not explain the shift from of the system of Empires to the
system of states that exist today. Accompanying the emergence of the modern state was the powerfully
seductive idea of the nation, and the force of nationalism- at once the most crucial, and the most
nebulous links in the chain. The remnants of Empire continued late into the 20th century, but the
political form of the nation-state would be the ordering principle of the new system. However, the
slightest interrogation of the idea of the nation, and of nationalism will show that there was nothing
inevitable, or organically compelling in the fusion of the idea of the nation with the entity of the
state. The ‘nation-state’ is one of the most convincing, self-perpetuating and enduring fictions of the
international state system.
The breakdown of the Empire and the obsolescence of the Kingdom happened in a number of
ways. A revolution in military affairs- the sophistication of armaments, the extensive use of cavalry,
the development of the cannon and the Gunpowder, meant that Monarch and Kings could no longer
rely upon mercenaries to fight as occasion arose; a permanent standing army, and a permanent
strategising for security, was required. This could be financed only by taxation of large sections of the
populace (mostly the farmer and the new breed of factory workers, the proletariat). The requirements
of taxation led to the creation of larger bureaucracies, and the police, to impose authority and
maintain law and order (Tilly, 1994). Simultaneously, the onward march of industrialisation created
an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie class. The owners of the means of production, or those who
formed the ‘superstructure’, could only benefit from an external guarantee of their lands and properties
(Sweezy, 1942). John Locke (1948) and Jean Jacque Rousseau (1913) theorised the need for an entity,
a State that could guarantee to men their properties, the toil of their labour, and thus facilitate man’s
natural (God given) rights, as well as the untrammelled exploration of his fullest potential.
Still, there was no one clear-cut threshold that previous entities crossed after which they would
recognised as states. As Newton and Deth explain, States were formed through a slow process, in
Europe, through several different routes. For example, England and France transformed over centuries
to acquire the trappings of a state. Germany and Italy were formed as a result of the unification,
by a King, of independent and dispersed political units in the nineteenth century. Still other states
mostly that of Eastern Europe and Eurasia were formed from the secession of parts, or the break-up
of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires (Newton and Deth, 2010: 23). Outside Europe, the
state form in the new world, in North and South America, and Australia were already ushered in
when the European natives in the colonies revolted against their brethren in the metropole (Strang,
1992). In the twentieth century, decolonisation would be a final way for the most substantial number
of states to come into existence.
No matter which route it took, this new entity of the state approximated Max Weber’s famous
observation, “a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use
of physical force within a given territory” (Weber, 1919). It was the element of the human community
in the constitution of the state that rubbed shoulders with, and eventually came to twine with the
idea of nation, gave rise to the force of nationalism that would not just sweep across Europe, but
travel through colonialism to engender new imaginations of the political in the non-European world.
There are as many theoretical attempts to explain what makes a nation. At root, a nation can be
said to be present when a number of people feel related to each other by a common past, future, or
destiny. The outstanding debates on nationalism have taken place among primordialists, perennialists,
modernists, and ethnosymbolists. Primordialists insist on the biological or ethnic ties among people
that assert themselves politically in a nation. Perennialists see the nation as a community of people
that banded together across or within empires, since ancient times. In contrast, the modernist
explanations of the origin of the nation pay close attention to the rise of industrialisation (Smith,
2004: 5-20). Ernst Gellner, in particular, shows how the development of the factories in cities moved
large chunks of population away from rural hinterlands, in the process creating an intermediate
culture, above blood relations, and below that of allegiance to a distant monarch, a standardisation
of the more influential vernaculars over others, and thus a new form of community, in the service
of capital- this would eventually be known as a nation (Gellner, 1983). Benedict Anderson traced
the collective imagination of a single community to the rise of the printing press and the coming
into circulation of novels and newspapers (Anderson 1982). The evolution of or the rediscovery of a
common language is usually central to the imagination of a nation. Anthony Smith insists on there
being an ethno-symbolist core, a ‘felt’ kinship at the heart of any mobilisation of ‘sleeping’ nations
into the political force of nationalism (Smith, 1998)
The idea of the nation was so powerful that no matter how recent, or how constructed its
origins were, it had the force of continuity, a felt kinship that would inspire men and women to
make contributions and sacrifices that they would not otherwise make to any calling beyond family,
community or religion. Nationalism answered the crisis of legitimacy that the newly sovereign
and consolidated states faced, with the loosening of the hold of religion over their subjects’ lives.
With nationalism, the sovereign could claim legitimacy in the same way as God. He need not be
the representative of God on the earthly realm, as with the early sovereigns, he could now be the
representative of men- a Leviathan. In return, his power would be circumscribed by the goodwill of
his fellow men who would cease to be subjects and would become citizens instead (Greenfeld, 1992).
Such ideas were brought to early fruition in the American secession from England, and in the
French Revolution against their Monarch. The Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen in 1789 were the earliest examples of the force of nationalism
mobilised around the creation and the consolidation of states. It became almost self-explanatory then
on, that all of humankind was naturally grouped into nations, popularised in no small measure all
over Europe by the German Romanticists like Fichte and Herder. The silent accompaniment was the
implication of the sentiment that each nation must have a state of its own.
Already there were those who foresaw the massive potential of nationalism as sentiment, ideology
and mobilising force, but also as a deeply divisive one. Ernst Renan (1992)highlighted the fact that
the creation of a nation involved as much forgetting, as remembrance and memorialisation. He also
insisted that the belonging to a nation be not taken for granted, and demanded whole-sale, but that
it should be ‘a daily plebiscite’. Much after the Napoleonic Wars would upset the relative peace of
almost half a century in Europe, and spread the idea of nation and nationalism far and wide (Mingst,
1999: 28), many would caution against the double-edged sword of the nationalism. While the force
of nation broke away larger Empires into smaller states, it also homogenised and wiped away those
who would potentially be a nation, but did not have the ‘wherewithal’6 to become also a state.
The inherent contradiction within, and the potential of mischief in the fusion of the ideas of the
nation and the state are summed up succinctly by Lord Acton.
The greatest adversary of the rights of nationality is the modern theory of nationality. By making
the State and the nation commensurate with each other in theory, it reduces practically to a subject
condition all other nationalities that may be within the boundary. It cannot admit them to an equality
with the ruling nation which constitutes the State, because the State would then cease to be national,
which would be a contradiction of the principle of its existence. According, therefore, to the degree
of humanity and civilisation in that dominant body which claims all the rights of the community,
the inferior races are exterminated, or reduced to servitude, or outlawed, or put in a condition of
dependence (Acton, 2007: 297).
It is interesting to note that Lord Acton was writing at a time when the European theatre was
seeing action of a far varied sort than just nationalism. The entrenchment of sovereignty within
Europe, to be accorded to Empire, the Kingdom, or the (break-away or unified) state, meant that
land in Europe was no longer up for grabs between each other. This gave further fillip to colonisation
elsewhere. The 18th and 19th centuries saw England and Russia emerge as the most powerful actors
on in Europe, who realised that peace and prosperity lay not in confronting each other, but in
maintaining a delicate ‘balance of power’. This approach was cemented in the Congress of Vienna in
1815. The balance of power also had to be maintained within the race for colonisation. The Congress
of Berlin in 1885, where the continent of Africa was carved up to the satisfaction of the established
and emerging players of the European theatre is a most poignant case in point. Over the next century,
these varied strands of nationalism, and nation-statism, colonisation, and the machinations of power
politics in Europe would all come to a head with the two World Wars, after which the contemporary
international system would take its present shape.
FIrSt World WAr: the SeedS oF the ‘InternAtIonAl’

InterStAte SySteM
From the vantage point of contemporary observers of nineteenth century Europe, the European
theatre was, in fact, a ‘multipolar’ one, the overwhelming influence of England and Russia
notwithstanding. The period was characterised by what would be known as ‘alliance politics’. Till the
end of the nineteenth century, Russia would play the role of building an elaborate and overlapping
system of alliances, and Britain would play the role of balancer in the delicate placement of these
alliances (Mingst, 1999: 30). The upheavals of the international system, if the European theatre can
be called that, was so far in the gradual disintegration of Empires, the Napoleonic onslaught, and the
race for colonies in Africa and Asia. Added to this, the emergence of Japan as an imperial force to
contend with, the scramble for China, and most significantly a resurgent Germany under Bismarck
shook-up the apparent stability of Europe.
When the First World War was sparked off by the infamous assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, none of the parties that got involved due to their alliance commitments predicted
it would take on the proportions which it did. Four years of trench and gas warfare later, and over
the bodies of ten million soldiers and civilians, it would hold out the despondent hope of being the
‘war to end all wars’. The onset, trajectory, causes and aftermath of the First World War have been
extensively debated and documented and need not be visited here.7 It is significant to remember
though that in the dominant narrative, it was the expansion and military adventurism of a resurgent
Germany that had plunged Europe into the war. Therefore, at the Paris Peace Conference (which
would eventually result in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919), a victor’s peace was imposed against
Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Italy. The harsh terms of the Treaty would were prophetically
seen by the future Governor General of the Indian colony, Archibald Wavell as the “peace that would
end all peace” (Pagden, 2008: 407).
Aside from the highlights of loss and victory in the First World War, several tectonic shifts were
underway, which would be accelerated by the course of the War. First, the War saw Empires within
Europe folding up. Austria-Hungary broke away into several smaller sovereign states while Russia was
taken over by a novel Communist revolution. Outside Europe, the territory of the Ottoman Empire,
like territories everywhere outside Europe, was carved between the victors of the War. Europe was
now divided into fully sovereign states which were fully predatory outside.
Second, the War however brought tidings of change to the colonised territories as well- hitherto on
either the margins or completely out of the screen of the European theatre. All over Asia and Africa
there was resistance to the English, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Italian and French imperial control.
There was much soul-searching done within these colonies on the political form this resistance would
take. Many harked back to a civilisational ethos, still others put their weight behind small village-
style republics or to a larger cosmopolitanism.8The Princely states in the South Asian subcontinent
and other similar entities elsewhere, were not willing to let go of the model of the Kingdom. The
model of a communist revolution had already overtaken Russia and was now spreading south as well.
However, the most attractive mode of imagining a future outside of colonial occupation, as well
as the most effective argument to be made to the colonial masters, was the language of nations and
nationalism. Anti-colonial movements everywhere became movements of nationalism- nations, that
would find their destiny in independence and statehood. This is not to say that the felt kinship that
characterises nations was absent in these parts, especially in light of increasingly mass-based resistance
struggles. However, the sheer variety and diversity of these resisting lands would not automatically
lend themselves to the imagination of a nation, unless it was for compelling external motivations as
well. The single most important source of this motivation was Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen points.
The war to end all wars had to be followed up by an ostensibly sound plan that would make
peace possible. American President Woodrow Wilson’s Declaration of Fourteen points was publicised
far and wide as the basis on which the terms of the war would be settled, and politics would be
conducted hereon. Of significance among those points was Wilson’s insistence on the ‘right to self-
determination’ of peoples, and nations. He, however, scarcely anticipated that his message, intended
originally as a basis on which to settle the fate of those territories wrenched from the losing side of
the war, would be interpreted as a blueprint for the birthing of new nation-states from among the
colonies of the victors as well. From India, to China, Singapore to Korea to Kenya and South Africa,
there was a flutter to resist the coloniser through mass uprisings. But the movements also sought to
to tell the emerging European international system, that these territories constituted nations, that,
according to their own light-bearer Wilson, could not be denied the ‘right to self-determination’
(Manela, 2005, 2007).In these territories that would subsequently be identified as postcolonial states,
nationalism was both a domestic and an international ‘performance’ (Chacko, 2011). In one stroke,
the glass ceiling of who could and could not be members of the new international system was cracked.
The international system would expand, and admit much more members; the caveat was, only
those members, who by force of their power, persuasion or circumstances would make the cut of
being independent nation-states. The intensification of struggle in the colonies would rapidly give
birth to many new entrants to the system; still others would have to wait for the cataclysmic events
of the second World War.
the Second World WAr: IncluSIonS, conSolIdAtIonS, And exclu-

SIonS
If the First World War was entirely unforeseen, the second, less than two decades apart, could be
entirely foreseen, at least by those who would don the lens of Realism, an outlook that would come
to dominate the international system soon after. The inter-war years were a period of what has been
called Liberal-idealism. The wisdom was that cooperation, not competition among sovereign nation-
states would keep peace in Europe, and by implication in the world. The credibility of liberalism
as a political principle needed to be seeded in the academic and policy worlds as well, and therein
began the first systematic funding for the discipline of International Relations.9 That the apparatus
to understand the emerging state system, rapidly burgeoning outwards from Europe, should be called
International Relations testified the extent to which the nation had become a legitimate political
category, and nationalism a legitimate political sentiment, and the movement for self-determination
a legitimate political activity.
With pure alliance politics and balance-of-power being discredited, this nascent international
system would have collective security at its core. The League of Nations, brought into force in 1920,
was the most ambitious supra-state forum till date, the first to try working with the logic of collective
security. It was ominous that the very force behind the idea of the League, Woodrow Wilson, could not
gather the support of his Congress, and America refrained from the League. Full of noble intentions,
full of hypocrisies, and full of loopholes,10 the League of Nations was almost set-up to fail, which it
did spectacularly by the 1930’s. In many ways, the League and its politics did not so much indicate
a shortness of sight, as has been alleged by later critics (Carr, 1939; Morgenthau, 1948), but also
reflected the fluidity of the growing international space at that time. Empires, Kingdoms, Republics,
States, Colonies, Trustees, Princely States, and Excluded Areas- all manners of political entities now
came closer to each other through the increase in communication and the force of globalisation, to
make for a rapidly evolving, but incredibly fractured world.
Carl Schmitt, the German jurist whose works would later provide a justification for The Third
Reich and the ideology of Fascism, declared around this time that, “The Sovereign is he who
decides the exception” (Schmitt, 2005: 5). Indeed, as the argument of the right to self-determination
globalised, the inter-war years were characterised by established sovereign entities trying to maintain
their colonial possessions through the argument of the exception. On the flip side, it was also full
of clamouring among all ‘non-state’ entities, to stake claim to the elixir of the sovereign exception.
The pan-European oppression and subsequent belligerence of Germany, along with the rise of
fascism and Nazism, swiftly precipitated into another all-consuming War. The Second World War
was a period of many firsts. The colonies that during the First World War had fought alongside their
European masters either helplessly, or in good faith, now held out bargains. Participation in the war
effort would now be conditional to the granting of independence post the War (Sarila, 2005: 220).
The European international system was widening and broadening, ironically shrinking the undisputed
power of European sovereignties in its wake.
The course of the Second World War too, like the First, is well detailed in numerous excellent
accounts, and need not detain us11. It is important to note that when the United States made a late
entry into the War, shedding its foundational policy of isolationism, it also stepped into a historical
vacuum left by the impoverishment of the United Kingdom. The Atlantic Charter of 1941 was as
much an affirmation of American and English solidarity, as much as it was a recognition that England
would no longer dominate globalising European politics (now morphing into the international system),
either through hard power, colonial possession, or balancing. With the two greatest challengers of
the status quo- Germany and Japan, and their set of allies taken care of, the remaining great powers-
America and the Soviet Union faced each other across Europe.
The dynamic of the interwar years would have repeated itself, albeit with substantial modifications
in response to the growing criticism of the realists, were it not for one particular revolution in
military affairs- the development and the use of the thermonuclear bomb. The overwhelming power
of destruction available to the possessor of the bomb, as witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
Japan in 1946, forced all states everywhere to rethink the rules of warfare, and reframe the underlying
logics of security and strategy. It was with the atomic bomb on its side that the United States of
America now sought to reshape the world in its own image.
The birthing moment of the contemporary state system is often pegged to the end of the Second
World War and the creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods Institutions.The evolving
adversity between America and the Soviet Union that would ultimately lead to half a century long
‘Cold War’ is mentioned as a parallel event, one that would dominate the international system after
the new institutions of the new system were in place.12 A closer interrogation shows us that these
processes rather went hand-in-hand.
Previously, the Russian Czarist Empire had posed a material challenge to the English Empire.
Now, Communist Soviet Russia posed an additional ideological challenge. The revolutionary state was
committed to a program of abetting and aiding workers revolutions everywhere in the world, and to
ultimately abolish the category of the state, as also the nation, altogether, in favour of a dictatorship
of the proletariat. The USA had on its hands not just the balancing of a powerful and ambitious
state, but more importantly the logic of Marxism that under-wrote the demise of everything that
Europe and the USA stood for- free markets, capitalism, nation-states. In creating the Bretton Woods
institutions, in aiding the rebuilding and reconstruction of Europe through the Marshall Plan, and
in supporting anti-colonial movements worldwide to birth numerous new States (nation-states), the
USA was fulfilling its own foreign policy objectives. If the germination of the international state
system accompanied the career of European domestic politics in the previous centuries, the shape
it took in the twentieth century mirrored the domestic compulsions of America. In this light, some
outstanding features of the post-War World can be now considered.
cold WAr, decolonISAtIon, And PoStcolonIAl SequeStrAtIon
International Relations wisdom portrays the Cold War not only as the single most important
dynamic in the 20th century international system, but as the only dynamic. The entire edifice of
Classical Realism, Neorealism, and Neoliberalism, as also the ‘great debates in IR’13 impress upon the
scholar and the observer, anywhere and everywhere in the world, that the nuclear rivalry between
the Capitalist and Communist camps determined the fate of all states everywhere. Even though the
United Nations admitted a record number of new member states borne from decolonisation, and in
the General Assembly each had a vote, but the big five- US, USSR, UK, France and China (more
appropriately Taiwan, in a token to the non-white world) had the veto power in the Security Council
and could thus use the sovereign exception at will (Okhovat, 2011). The Non-Aligned Movement
championed liberalism, anti colonialism, pacifism, and human rights, and the Arab world played their
oil card to fullest advantage, but it was all subsumed under a variety of regional organisations and
bilateral treaties with the two big players (Miskovic et. al. 2014). Moreover, it was the select few who
got on to the nuclear bus, who permanently gate-keep the dynamic of geopolitics and geo-strategy
that the possession of nuclear arms entailed (Schrafstetter and Twigge ,2004). In sum, great power
politics, nuclear weapons, the balancing-of-power, and bipolarity dominated the international system.
In the shadow of the Cold War theatre, however, numerous new dynamics were being seeded, that
would come to the attention of the discipline of IR only when the USSR imploded in 1991. The US
now had to find other enemies to save the world from, and the nomenclature of the Cold War was
beginning to be replaced with the far benign sounding- ‘New World Order’. International Relations
scholarship has paid some attention to the hot theatres of the Cold War- Korea, Vietnam, Angola and
Afghanistan among numerous others. It also recognizes the break in non-aligned solidarity between
India and China, the two emerging powers of the third world, and the unlikely axis between the
USA, China, and Pakistan, resulting in the increasing isolation of the USSR, as significant milestones.
The post-Cold War era however, would be dominated by unique concerns. Mary Kaldor sees civil
wars, secessionist movements, dirty wars, proxy wars, and transnational crime as the hallmarks of
the international system at the end of the millennium (1999). There have been more efforts to study
such phenomena in isolation, or at least at a relative distance from the otherwise stable picture of
the international state system. The discipline of IR has spawned another sub-discipline of Peace and
Conflict Studies, to study and deal with the specifics of such disturbances. However, there remain
compelling structural dimensions, certain inherent features of the international state system that
contribute to the ‘New Wars’ of the new millennium (Kaldor, 1999).
One important structural factor that is omitted from conventional accounts is the arbitrary territorial
mapping of postcolonial states during decolonisation. We have seen earlier how, due to the norm of
self-determination accorded ostensibly to nations, anti-colonial movements had to transmute to nations,
to claim statehood, almost overnight. The problem arose when it was decided that decolonisation
would apply the principle of self-determination not to any group of people articulating themselves
as a nation, but to the erstwhile borders of the colonial possessions. This was the doctrine of uti
possidetis juris.14 Thus states came into existence that almost always contained within them more
than one nation, numerous potential nations, or had nations cut across several state borders. The state
now had to make one nation, out of the kaleidoscope of present, scattered and germinating nations
that it inherited. The consolidation of the state now came to known as nation-building (Connor,
1972). Such top down nation building often fell into conflict with bottom up nationalism within these
post-colonies themselves. This led to large scale disturbances within numerous postcolonial states,
which would be called resistance movements or separatism/ secessionism/ insurgency depending on
whichever gaze was applied to it.
The second structural factor follows from this first. While anti-colonial nationalisms could argue
and claim independence, such claims were admitted only against those colonised by Europe. The
adoption of the ‘blue-water fallacy’ in international law, and also followed by the United Nations
meant that charges of colonialism could only be made against those powers that ruled from across
the seas, not from across the land or the river (Philpott, 2001: 153-167). This nullified at once the
quest of those who alleged and fought against age-old or modern colonialisms of contemporary
postcolonial state. Citing the example of Tibet and Palestine, among many others, Fred Halliday
names the phenomena ‘postcolonial sequestration’ (2008).15 Dibyesh Anand sees in many postcolonial
states, the workings of a ‘postcolonial informal empire’ (2012).
A third structural factor that contributes to internal instability within many postcolonial states
in large swathes of the world, especially in Africa is what Robert Jackson calls the norm of ‘de-jure
sovereignty’. Independence, Statehood, and expectations of nationhood accorded to former colonies,
often arbitrary lines on the map meant that there would be a bloody scramble for power to establish
the monopoly of violence and power within, even as sovereignty was granted by the international
community without. Combined with a constant reliance on external monetary aid, and the constant
requirements of complying with the global demands of capital meant that African states would be
permanently rent-seeking and be run by mafia style tribal enterprises (Bayart, 2009). Notwithstanding
African regional solidarity, most African states have gone through, and continue to go through deep
civil disturbances, and remain in a state of either a precarious peace or permanent unrest.
The three structural distortions of the current international system briefly introduced above are
some among the many ways in which the spread of a European model, expectations of matching up
to European ideals, and a deeply entrenched Euro-American power dynamic perpetuate continued
disorder.
concluSIon
This chapter attempted a historical, analytical, and critical narrative of the emergence of the
international state system. Due to the paucity of space, as well as the magnitude of the task, the chapter
didn’t go into as much historical detail as it did into the isolation and analysis of several outstanding
moments and features of the long trajectory of the current world order. Thus, this chapter is not a
substitute for a historical account. It intends however, to sensitise the reader to seek many and varied,
even opposing historical accounts, located in very different parts of the world, to understand that
both the international state system and its history is a contestation. Not only is there contestation in
the kinds of actors that inhabit the system, their very roles are contested. According to Itty Abraham,
the contemporary international is an, ‘an unstable space produced by a constant struggle between
status quo and insurgent forces’ and that the state system is deeply concerned with the exclusion or
regulation of these insurgent forces and unrecognised actors. (Abraham, 2014: xvi, 4).
Even as this is written, new and confounding domestic, international, and transnational changes
are sweeping across the globe. The rise of China and the shrinking of America is reshaping geopolitics
and loosening older normative ideals. Free markets and open borders are coming into question in the
very lands that sought to impose these ‘ideals’ upon the world. Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism
is being replaced by particularism, racial, religious and communal profiling, and growing intolerance.
Terrorism is both a means of a proxy war between states, as well as a non-traditional worldwide
security threat. Human rights are violated in the process of effective regime changes in the garb of
protecting human rights (Cunliffe, 2011). Words like ‘post-truth’, and ‘alternative facts’ abound in
mainstream lexicon, though their meanings are far from clear, reflecting the uncertain state of the
international system on the whole.
There are no easy answers to how things came to be this way. A critical engagement with the
emergence of the international state system provides some clues.
key PoIntS to reMeMber

 The contemporary international system consists of the interplay of states, sovereignty, and
territory, people, and power; the state being the ultimate repository of all the other factors.
States are held to be functionally similar, motivated at the very least by the need for survival.
 The contemporary system is Eurocentric in nature, i.e. it takes the European experience to be
universal, and the European ideal the aspiration for all other parts of the world.
 The actual emergence of the international system has been far more complex, varied and
dynamic. It is essential to be mindful of these complexities to understand contemporary global
turmoil.
 The Treaty of Westphalia is among the crucial founding myths of the contemporary system- it
is important to consider the processes of sovereignty, diplomacy, and separation of religion
from the state as gradual processes rather than as a watershed event.
 Empires and Kingdoms gave way to States through many different ways in Europe. However,
the ideology of nationalism, by turning subjects into citizens cemented the break from the past.
 The contemporary international system, as well as the account of its emergence, its history, is
better understood as a contestation. Interaction between the forces of power, justice, legitimacy
and community, continue to dynamically shape the International System.
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noteS
1. The survival versus socialization debate is waged in international relations typically between
the neorealist school of thought, of whom Kenneth Waltz (1979) is the most towering figure,
and between the Liberal (Keohane and Nye 1984, Moravcsik 1997), English School (Bull
1977), Constructivist (Wendt 1999) approaches Postcolonial political theory (Seth 2011),
and Decoloniality (Mignolo 2011, Quijano 2000) contribute to this dialogue while also being
mindful of the overwhelming role of power in shaping both material and discursive realities.
2. An Empire is a political formation characterised by an aggregation. The Emperor rules over many
peoples, many nations, several Kingdoms. Tom Nairn and Paul James define empires as polities
that, ‘extend relations of power across territorial spaces over which they have no prior or given legal
sovereignty, and where, in one or more of the domains of economics, politics, and culture, they gain
some measure of extensive hegemony over those spaces for the purpose of extracting or accruing
value’ (Nairn and James 2006).
8. For sustained accounts of the relationship between modernity, capitalism, and colonialism see
Beaud (2004), and Gillen and Ghosh (2007).
4. Hardt and Negri argue that the logic of Empire would continue to operate within the international
state system in subtle but powerful ways (2000).
5. The entire spectrum of this debate is summed up in Green (2013)
6. In today’s terms, this is translated as ‘capability’, and overwhelmingly understood as ‘hard power’.
7. Wilson and Keegan’s (1999) remains an authoritative and comprehensive analysis and documentation
of the First World War.
8. The two most outspoken proponents of such vision were Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath
Tagore.
9. See previous chapter.
10. Intentions relate to its attempt to build a lasting peace and its commitment to the Kellog-Briand
Pact, hypocrisies relate to its perpetuation of colonization by its member states, loopholes relate to its
inability to discipline expelled members through the strategy of collective security. A comprehensive
assessment of the League and its contribution to the Second World War is found in Walters (1969).
11. A holistic and authoritative account can be found in Weinberg (1994).
12. A typical example of the prevalence of such accounts is found in works as authoritative as that of
Lynn-Jones and Miller (2001).
13. Refer Chapter 1.
14. Uti Possidetis Juris refers to the customary law in contemporary international relations whereby the
borders of the colonial empires would form the borders of contemporary postcolonial states, any
national, tribal, communal, or religious cross affiliation notwithstanding.
15. Fred Halliday has coined the term ‘postcolonial sequestration’ to refer to the condition by which
certain peoples and nations in the third world benefited negatively from the process of decolonisation,
and face colonisation like conditions under contemporary postcolonial states themselves.
gloSSAry
Legitimacy (1): The belief, held either by individuals, or the community, that a rule, institution, or leader has
the right to govern. Legitimacy, a normative concept, ensures power is not used coercively, and that it
aspires towards just ends. It is distinct from, and sometimes counter-to legality.
Power (1): In International Politics power it translates into the capability to make another do, what they
would not otherwise have done. Power is exercised both coercively, through force, normatively, through
persuasion, and systemically- through a capitalist system of production, by turning people into subjects
of governance, or influencing mass perception.
Collective Security (2): The concept of cooperation by several countries, or even regional and global orders,
in an alliance to strengthen the security of each. A commitment to a collective response to threats to,
and breaches to peace, in the period between the two world wars, collective security has had a disastrous
career as a prescription for international security concerns.
Indigenous Peoples’ Discourse (2): A growing movement worldwide, where first nations, indigenes, tribal
societies, and other collective communities self-define themselves, and work- through academia,
activism, and politics, to demand greater rights over the territories they inhabit, and their social, political
and economic futures.
End of History (3) The political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic,
or social system would emerge as an end-point in humanity’s political and sociocultural evolution. The
thesis was used extensively to a capitalist post-modern vision of the world following the collapse of the
USSR.
Post-truth (3): A nascent political culture in which debates is framed largely by appeals to emotion, while
being disconnected from the details of policy, analysis, and facts. There is repeated assertion of talking
points the factual rebuttals to which are deliberately ignored.
Alternative Facts (3): A phrase inadvertently mainstreamed by the Counsellor to Donald Trump Kellyanne
Conway to defend false information. It captured popular imagination like wild-fire, suggesting the onset
of an era where facts, objectivity, truth, testing, verification, and such like, would recede in value to
emotional appeals, and both spontaneous and carefully crafted rumours.
Renaissance (5): The activity, spirit, or time of the great revival of art, literature, and learning in Europe between
the 14th and 17th centuries, which also popularly marks the transition to the medieval to modern world,
from a Eurocentric perspective.
Second Sex (5): Derived from the title of a 1949 book by the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, in
which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history.
Mercantilism (6): A form of national economic policy in modernising parts of Europe in the 16th to 18th
centuries, designed to maximise the trade of a nation, by governmental regulation of a nation’s economy
for the ultimate purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers.
Protestant Ethic (6): Popularised by Max Weber, a term in sociological theory to refer to the value attached
to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling, which, especially in the Calvinist view, were
deemed signs of an individual’s election, or eternal salvation. It was an important factor in the economic
success of Protestant groups in the early stages of European capitalism.
Right to Self-Determination (12): The legal right of people to decide their own destiny in the international
order. A core principle of international law, arising from customary international law, but also recognized
as a general principle of law, and enshrined in a number of international treaties. Contemporary
notions distinguish between “internal” and “external” self-determination, thus suggesting that “self-
determination” exists on a spectrum.
Sovereign Exception (13): Refers to a concept in Legal Theory expounded by Carl Schmidtt. A state
of exception is similar to a state of emergency and is based on the sovereign’s ability to transcend the rule
of law in the name of the public good.
Dictatorship of the proletariat (14): A standard of Marxist socio-political thought, it refers to a state in which
the working class controls political power, and the means of production.
Non-Aligned Movement (15): An international movement led by newly independent third world states who
did not want to be aligned with or against any major power bloc- the US or the USSR.
Blue Water Fallacy (17): The norm in international law whereby the right to self-determination can be
claimed by a community/ nation/ colony only against those political powers whose origins are separated
by seas and oceans. For example, legally speaking, Tibet has a weak claim for colonization by China.
Cosmopolitanism (18): The ideology that all human beings belong to a single community, based on a shared
morality. Differences of race, ethnicity, sex, religion, or community are subsumed for a larger human
identification.
Multiculturalism (18): The presence of, or support for the presence of, several distinct cultural or ethnic
groups within a society. Used mainly in the context of migration into Europe in the last seven decades.

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CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS

AGOA Africa Growth and Opportunity Act

PCA Permanent Court of Arbitration

The discipline of International Relations presupposes the existence of an International System.

AnArchy And the SovereIgn PrerogAtIve

InterrogAtIng FoundIng MythS: the WeStPhAlIAn order

ModernIty And colonIAlISM: one WAy Street or A FeedbAck looP?

FroM eMPIreS to StAteS, nAtIon-StAteS, And nAtIonS

FIrSt World WAr: the SeedS oF the ‘InternAtIonAl’

the Second World WAr: IncluSIonS, conSolIdAtIonS, And exclu-

outstanding features of the post-War World can be now considered.

cold WAr, decolonISAtIon, And PoStcolonIAl SequeStrAtIon

key PoIntS to reMeMber

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