Before the West
The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders

Zarakol presents the first comprehensive history of the international relations in 'the East', and rethinks 'sovereignty', 'order-making' and 'decline'.

Ayşe Zarakol (Author)

9781108838603, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 March 2022

330 pages, 4 b/w illus. 3 maps
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.61 kg

'This terrific book vividly illuminates how history can inform our understanding of our world, our future, and our theories, and it suggests the exciting possibility of even greater depth through further engagement with the 'global IR' literature.' Carla Norrlöf, Perspectives on Politics

How would the history of international relations in 'the East' be written if we did not always read the ending – the Rise of the West and the decline of the East – into the past? What if we did not assume that Asia was just a residual category, a variant of 'not-Europe', but saw it as a space of with its own particular history and sociopolitical dynamics, not defined only by encounters with European colonialism? How would our understanding of sovereignty, as well as our theories about the causes of the decline of Great Powers and international orders, change as a result? For the first time, Before the West offers a grand narrative of (Eur)Asia as a space connected by normatively and institutionally overlapping successive world orders originating from the Mongol Empire. It also uses that history to rethink the foundational concepts and debates of international relations, such as order and decline.

1. What Is the East?
Part I. Cihannüma: 2. Making the East: Chinggisid World Orders
3. Dividing the East: Post-Chinggisid World Orders
4. Expanding the East: Post-Timurid World Orders
5. How the East made the world: Eurasia and beyond
Part II. Lessons of History: 6. Rise and fall of Eastern World Orders
7. Uses and abuses of macro-history in international relations.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Social theory [JHBA], General & world history [HBG]