The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary.

• Author: Acharya, Amitav

Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan's The Making of Global International Relations: Origins and Evolution of IR at its Centenary is a sophisticated survey of the history of modern international relations and the discipline of International Relations (IR) from the perspective of Global IR. The authors embark upon a project to embrace greater pluralism and overcome the Western hegemony in IR. The book covers the international and disciplinary histories from the nineteenth century to the present. Its overall argument is that the evolution of IR has mirrored that of modern international relations. Accordingly the authors examine what they call versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 of Global International Society (GIS) and their consecutive parallels in IR in ten tight-knit chapters.

They first examine the making of modern international relations from the nineteenth century to 1919. This analysis observes that owing to the ideational and material revolutions of modernity "the first ever global-scale international society" (p. 17), namely version 1.0 of GIS, emerged in this period. This international society was characterized by a strict core-periphery division with a Europe-led world economy colonialism, and racism. When it comes to the corresponding story of the discipline, the authors suggest that "the main foundations of IR, in terms of both its agenda of issues and the theoretical approaches to the subject matter, were laid down during the several decades before 1919" (p. 34), criticizing the 1919 myth of IR. This "IRbefore IR" (p. 4), including such schools of thought as Geopolitics and International Law, was exclusively dominated by the concerns and perspectives of the core, particularly reflecting power gaps, hierarchy, racism, and colonialism. That said, "the first shoots of modern IR thinking" (p. 55) were also in play in the periphery under the umbrella of anticolonialism and culturalism.

Moving to the interwar years, Acharya and Buzan demonstrate how the structure of international relations sustained its version 1.0 with the continuation of its West-dominated core-periphery order and major institutions from colonialism to territoriality, albeit with a set of changes such as the League of Nations. This maintenance was echoed in the schedule of interwar IR, which was also institutionalized as an academic discipline. The core thinking was largely obsessed with the issue of great power war and peace due to the trauma of the First World War, but it still...