History of International Relations

History of International Relations PDF

Author: Erik Ringmar

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2019-08-02

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1783740256

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Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues. The volume is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the international systems that traditionally existed in Europe, East Asia, pre-Columbian Central and South America, Africa and Polynesia. The second part discusses the ways in which these international systems were brought into contact with each other through the agency of Mongols in Central Asia, Arabs in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, Indic and Sinic societies in South East Asia, and the Europeans through their travels and colonial expansion. The concluding section concerns contemporary issues: the processes of decolonization, neo-colonialism and globalization – and their consequences on contemporary society. History of International Relations provides a unique textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of international relations, and anybody interested in international relations theory, history, and contemporary politics.

Useful Enemies

Useful Enemies PDF

Author: Noel Malcolm

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-05-02

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 019256580X

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From the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the eighteenth century, many Western European writers viewed the Ottoman Empire with almost obsessive interest. Typically they reacted to it with fear and distrust; and such feelings were reinforced by the deep hostility of Western Christendom towards Islam. Yet there was also much curiosity about the social and political system on which the huge power of the sultans was based. In the sixteenth century, especially, when Ottoman territorial expansion was rapid and Ottoman institutions seemed particularly robust, there was even open admiration. In this path-breaking book Noel Malcolm ranges through these vital centuries of East-West interaction, studying all the ways in which thinkers in the West interpreted the Ottoman Empire as a political phenomenon - and Islam as a political religion. Useful Enemies shows how the concept of 'oriental despotism' began as an attempt to turn the tables on a very positive analysis of Ottoman state power, and how, as it developed, it interacted with Western debates about monarchy and government. Noel Malcolm also shows how a negative portrayal of Islam as a religion devised for political purposes was assimilated by radical writers, who extended the criticism to all religions, including Christianity itself. Examining the works of many famous thinkers (including Machiavelli, Bodin, and Montesquieu) and many less well-known ones, Useful Enemies illuminates the long-term development of Western ideas about the Ottomans, and about Islam. Noel Malcolm shows how these ideas became intertwined with internal Western debates about power, religion, society, and war. Discussions of Islam and the Ottoman Empire were thus bound up with mainstream thinking in the West on a wide range of important topics. These Eastern enemies were not just there to be denounced. They were there to be made use of, in arguments which contributed significantly to the development of Western political thought.

Empires of the Weak

Empires of the Weak PDF

Author: J. C. Sharman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 0691210071

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What accounts for the rise of the state, the creation of the first global system, and the dominance of the West? The conventional answer asserts that superior technology, tactics, and institutions forged by Darwinian military competition gave Europeans a decisive advantage in war over other civilizations from 1500 onward. In contrast, Empires of the Weak argues that Europeans actually had no general military superiority in the early modern era. J. C. Sharman shows instead that European expansion from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries is better explained by deference to strong Asian and African polities, disease in the Americas, and maritime supremacy earned by default because local land-oriented polities were largely indifferent to war and trade at sea. Europeans were overawed by the mighty Eastern empires of the day, which pioneered key military innovations and were the greatest early modern conquerors. Against the view that the Europeans won for all time, Sharman contends that the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a relatively transient and anomalous development in world politics that concluded with Western losses in various insurgencies. If the twenty-first century is to be dominated by non-Western powers like China, this represents a return to the norm for the modern era. Bringing a revisionist perspective to the idea that Europe ruled the world due to military dominance, Empires of the Weak demonstrates that the rise of the West was an exception in the prevailing world order.

Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean

Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean PDF

Author: Joshua M. White

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 150360392X

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The 1570s marked the beginning of an age of pervasive piracy in the Mediterranean that persisted into the eighteenth century. Nowhere was more inviting to pirates than the Ottoman-dominated eastern Mediterranean. In this bustling maritime ecosystem, weak imperial defenses and permissive politics made piracy possible, while robust trade made it profitable. By 1700, the limits of the Ottoman Mediterranean were defined not by Ottoman territorial sovereignty or naval supremacy, but by the reach of imperial law, which had been indelibly shaped by the challenge of piracy. Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean is the first book to examine Mediterranean piracy from the Ottoman perspective, focusing on the administrators and diplomats, jurists and victims who had to contend most with maritime violence. Pirates churned up a sea of paper in their wake: letters, petitions, court documents, legal opinions, ambassadorial reports, travel accounts, captivity narratives, and vast numbers of decrees attest to their impact on lives and livelihoods. Joshua M. White plumbs the depths of these uncharted, frequently uncatalogued waters, revealing how piracy shaped both the Ottoman legal space and the contours of the Mediterranean world.

Red Sea Citizens

Red Sea Citizens PDF

Author: Jonathan Miran

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2009-07-06

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0253220793

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In the late 19th century, the port of Massawa, in Eritrea on the Red Sea, was a thriving, vibrant, multiethnic commercial hub. Red Sea Citizens tells the story of how Massawa rose to prominence as one of Northeast Africa's most important shipping centers. Jonathan Miran reconstructs the social, material, religious, and cultural history of this mercantile community in a period of sweeping change. He shows how Massawa and its citizens benefited from migrations across the Indian Ocean, the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, and the African interior. Miran also notes the changes that took place in Massawa as traders did business and eventually settled. By revealing the dynamic processes at play, this book provides insight into the development of the Horn of Africa that extends beyond borders and boundaries, nations and nationalism.

Rulers, Religion, and Riches

Rulers, Religion, and Riches PDF

Author: Jared Rubin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-02-16

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 110703681X

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This book seeks to explain the political and religious factors leading to the economic reversal of fortunes between Europe and the Middle East.

Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe

Visions of the Ottoman World in Renaissance Europe PDF

Author: Andrei Pippidi

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199327836

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Key protagonists in these debates included Erasmus, Luther and Machiavelli. Today we might call them intellectuals, yet mostly they did not travel, and direct contact with the Ottoman Empire was scarce or nonexistent. Nor were they well disposed to its predecessor, the Byzantine Empire, whose fall presented them with an intellectual conundrum: how were they to explain the irresistible advance of the Ottomans across the Balkans and the inability of Christian Europe to hold the line? They also felt compelled to incorporate this significant new threat into their vision of a world order, to rationalise it, to unravel its origins. These discussions spawned a common market of ideas in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, as Europeans debated and represented the Ottoman threat. Readers of this book will find many echoes in Pippidi's analysis of today's debates about the relationship of Turkey with Europe and the struggle to accommodate the descendants of the Ottomans in our midst.

The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it

The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it PDF

Author: Suraiya Faroqhi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2005-12-20

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0857730231

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In Islamic law the world was made up of the 'House of Islam' and the 'House of War' with the Ottoman Sultan - successor to the early Caliphs - as supreme ruler of the Islamic world. However, in this ground-breaking study of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period, Suraiya Faroqhi demonstrates that there was no 'iron curtain' between the Ottoman and 'other' worlds but rather a long-established network of connections - diplomatic, trading and financial., cultural and religious. These extended beyond regional contacts to the empires of Asia and the burgeoning 'modern' states of Europe - England, France, the Netherlands and Venice. Of course, military conflict was a constant factor in these relationships, but the overriding reality was 'one world' and contact between cultured and pragmatic elites - even 'gentlemen travelling for pleasure' - as well as pilgrimage and close artistic contact with the European Renaissance. Faroqhi's book is based on a huge study of original and early modern sources, including diplomatic records, travel and geographical writing, as well as personal accounts. Its breadth and originality will make it essential reading for historians of Europe and the Middle East.

Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939

Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 PDF

Author: Isa Blumi

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-09-12

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1472515382

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In the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Balkans and Middle East, a familiar story of destroyed communities forced to flee war or economic crisis unfolded. Often, these refugees of the Ottoman Empire - Christians, Muslims and Jews - found their way to new continents, forming an Ottoman diaspora that had a remarkable ability to reconstitute, and even expand, the ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity of their homelands. Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. Isa Blumi explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era.