The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations.

• Author: Kildis, Huseyin Pusat

The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations

By Barry Buzan and George Lawson

London: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 396 Pages, ISBN: 9781107630802

In The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, Barry Buzan and George Lawson argue that the basic structure of modern international relations was generated during the 'long nineteenth century' (1776-1914) through a global transformation rather than a turning point such as 1648 or 1919. The impact of this transformation was not limited to the 19th century and has influenced subsequent centuries.

According to the authors, global transformation takes place through three intertwined processes, namely industrialization, the rational state and ideologies of progress (p. 6). The difference between this transformation and others is its development rate: "the global transformation has been compressed into a compact time span, with major changes happening on a scale of decades rather than centuries" (p. 23). The significant developments in the transformation also have created a new "mode of power" that can be described as "the material and ideational relations that are generative of both actors and the ways in which power is exercised" (p. 1).

The book consists of three parts divided into ten chapters. In the first part, there are two chapters, which offer an overview of the global transformation in the nineteenth century and question the importance of the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the institutionalism of international relations (1919). The authors state that, counter to the mainstream narrative, Westphalia did not constitute but rather 'limited' the idea of sovereignty that had been established earlier at the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. Moreover, they argue that the discipline of International Relations (IR) was already institutionalized before 1919 since it was taught as a course in the United States during the last part of the nineteenth century (pp. 49-50).

The second part has six chapters; they reveal how the modern structure of international relations is shaped. These chapters address how a core-periphery "Western-colonial" period was established through the global transformation; it then changed into a "Western-global" stage starting from 1945 to the first decade of the twenty-first century (pp. 176, 273). According to the authors, the former period was quite unequal and consisted of mostly European states...