The most important development in the world concerns the
reconstitution of the world along post-Western lines. The value of Spryut’s
book is that it reintroduces an imperial perspective to the discipline of
international relations.
The book describes how imperial international
relations functioned in the Middle East, northern and southern Asia. The author
focuses on their collective beliefs, demonstrating how much these beliefs and
resulting outcomes differed from those in the West and its Westphalia-based
state system.
The book reminds us of what the world was like when the West was
less powerful and what may be about to become now that the Western hegemony is
shattered.
Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Spruyt explains the political organization of three non-European international societies from early modernity to the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires; the Sinocentric tributary system; and the Southeast Asian galactic empires, all which differed in key respects from the modern Westphalian state system. In each of these societies, collective beliefs were critical in structuring domestic orders and relations with other polities. These multi-ethnic empires allowed for greater accommodation and heterogeneity in comparison to the homogeneity that is demanded by the modern nation-state. Furthermore, Spruyt examines the encounter between these non-European systems and the…
Continuing with the theme of the post-Western world, this book
reveals and reestablishes one particular narrative of international relations
from the Eastern perspective.
It challenges the established Western concepts
such as sovereignty, great power, modernity, industrial revolution, and
international order by providing an alternative world history. The world
existed before the West and was not collapsing despite the absence of a
“benevolent hegemon.”
By looking into the organization of the Mongol empire as
a hierarchical prelude to emerging imperial orders in Eurasia, the book
suggests historical and analytic paths for understanding the roots of the
contemporary world and its potential future. this book should be studied by all
interested in a global/comparative IR theory.
How would the history of international relations in 'the East' be written if we did not always read the ending - the Rise of the West and the decline of the East - into the past? What if we did not assume that Asia was just a residual category, a variant of 'not-Europe', but saw it as a space of with its own particular history and sociopolitical dynamics, not defined only by encounters with European colonialism? How would our understanding of sovereignty, as well as our theories about the causes of the decline of Great Powers and international orders, change…
Finally, if we are to understand the intellectual foundations of
the post-Western world in terms of IR isms, then we ought to study the
power/culture intersection well.
For these reasons, as this book does, it’s
important to consider the potential dialogue between classical realism of
scholars such as E.H. Carr and Hans Morgenthau, on the one hand, and
post-colonial theorists including Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. Du
Bois, and Aimé Césaire, on the other. Both sides have much to benefit from each
other in understanding the phenomena of race, imperialism, and war.
This book highlights important parallels between Carr and three influential figures in the first wave of post-colonialism-DuBois, Cesaire and Fanon-on the analysis of imperialism and the causes of war. Specifically, Carr's analysis of imperialism and war parallels the first wave post-colonial thinkers in two respects. First, Carr's work historically situates imperialism in the context of the social question in Western democracies. Second, Carr's work provides an ideology critique to Enlightenment rationalism, which postulates that 'reason could determine what [are] the universally valid moral laws' and thus 'by the voice of reason men could be persuaded both to save their own…
The "Russian Idea" in International
Relations (IR)
identifies different approaches within Russian Civilizational tradition as
distinctive from those established in the West. Civilizational ideas in IR
theory express states’ cultural identification and stress religious traditions,
social customs, and economic and political values. The book analyzes three
schools of Russian civilizational thinking about international relations –
Slavophiles, Communists, and Eurasianists. Each school focuses on Russia’s
distinctive spiritual, social, and geographic roots. Each is internally divided
between those claiming Russia’s exceptionalism, potentially resulting in
regional autarchy or imperial expansion, and those advocating the Russian Idea
as global in its appeal.
