Why read Before the West?

Book cover of Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Before the West as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrei P. Tsygankov

Author

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…

From Andrei's 3 favorite reads in 2023.