International Orders in the Early Modern World

"Perhaps ‘1648 and all that’ fundamentally distorts our understanding of the history of international relations. By rediscovering early modern and non-western international orders, this expert team sets out a challenge to IR scholarship. It is especially welcome and important in making sense of the profound changes currently underway." - Ian Clark, E. H. Carr Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University

"Maps centered on the South Pole are amusing, but international relations books centered on the non-Western world are essential. From its origins, international relations theory has been a Western enterprise with other parts of the world largely ignored or analyzed through parochial and often inappropriate conceptions. Suzuki, Zhang, Quirk and their collaborators turn the tables and offer perspectives on Europe from East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and generally at a time when European interlopers were unable to impose their preferences on these cultures. They effectively demonstrate the importance of non-Western cultures and their ideas in shaping global history." - Richard Ned Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory, King's College London, UK

"An outstanding volume of non-Eurocentric historical-sociological essays that advances an extremely powerful critique of the English School’s commitment to what I call the ‘Eurocentric big bang theory of world politics’ – that the big bang of modernity exploded autonomously within Europe and that thereafter European ‘civilization’ expanded outwards in a non-problematic way to remake the world in its own image – by deploying the antidote of bringing Eastern agency back into the story of the long-term development of world politics." - John M. Hobson, Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield, UK.

"Perhaps ‘1648 and all that’ fundamentally distorts our understanding of the history of international relations. By rediscovering early modern and non-western international orders, this expert team sets out a challenge to IR scholarship. It is especially welcome and important in making sense of the profound changes currently underway." - Ian Clark, E. H. Carr Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University

"Maps centered on the South Pole are amusing, but international relations books centered on the non-Western world are essential. From its origins, international relations theory has been a Western enterprise with other parts of the world largely ignored or analyzed through parochial and often inappropriate conceptions. Suzuki, Zhang, Quirk and their collaborators turn the tables and offer perspectives on Europe from East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and generally at a time when European interlopers were unable to impose their preferences on these cultures. They effectively demonstrate the importance of non-Western cultures and their ideas in shaping global history." - Richard Ned Lebow, Professor of International Political Theory, King's College London, UK

"Obviously, this book's overall aim of reassessing European thinking in the study of international relations is well represented. The sharp but productive criticisms of contemporary international relations theories offer valuable insight into future studies focused on historical approaches in a non-European/Eurocentric context." - Sung Hee Ru, Insight Turkey