International Orders in the Early Modern World: Before the Rise of the West.

• Author: Ru, Sung Hee
• Position: Book review

International Orders in the Early Modern World

Before the Rise of the West

Edited by Shogo Suzuki, Yongjin Zhang and Joel Quirk

London: Routledge, 2014, xviii+214 pages, $140, ISBN 9780415626286.

This book is an in-depth study that investigates the international relations between the western and non-western world while challenging the Eurocentric ideas of modern international relations. Significantly, all authors demonstrate how non-western countries' international relations are important to understand global history and why Westphalian-oriented international relations are misunderstood in the early modern era. The main idea in this book that contemporary international relations theories found it difficult to stand their fundamental ground on the notion that western countries are so dynamic, as western-centered global dominance is natural and eternal while non-western countries are static and passive that they do not play a leading role on the international stage. By analyzing not only "cross-cultural interactions" before the rise of the west but also various regional international orders in non-western regions, this volume convincingly shows there had been "lopsided," "unilinear," and "myopic" views of the international relationship context unlike the dominant IR theory of "cohesive," "homogenous," and "evolutionary" views. In this context, this book basically challenges the main ontological assumptions of Eurocentric IR scholars. As Ayla Gol argues, it is time to remove the "iron curtain" of misunderstanding of international relations between the west and nonwestern countries.

The book has nine chapters, covering international relations of non-western countries in the early modern period. Each part describes how western countries had relations with non-western countries, such as Mongolia, the Ottoman Empire, China, Japan, India, America, and Africa until 1850 and how Mongolia, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Japan held a superior position on the international scene than western countries. Iver B. Neumann, Ayla Gol, Yingjin Zhang, and Shogo Suzuki highlight "the existence of plural international order" and break of "government by a single set of norms and institutions of the European world." Essentially, they aim to debunk Eurocentric historiography of how Europeans have tried to bury the fact that non-western countries had controlled western countries.

In addition, Darshan Vigneswaran and Charles Johns raise questions about English school...