Re-imagining International Relations
World Orders in the Thought and Practice of Indian, Chinese, and Islamic Civilizations

A novel introduction to the thought and practice of international relations from premodern India, China and the Islamic world, and how it relates to modern IR.

Barry Buzan (Author), Amitav Acharya (Author)

9781316513859, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 December 2021

240 pages
22.3 x 14.7 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'This short book packs a disproportionately big punch in advancing Global IR. It does this most impressively by, inter alia, showing how many of the concepts of IR that have for so long been assumed to be Western are in fact more genuinely universal given that they found their place in various ways in pre-modern Islam, India and China, sometimes even pre-dating their emergence in the West.' John M. Hobson, Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield

Buzan and Acharya challenge the discipline of International Relations to reimagine itself in the light of the thinking about, and practice of, international relations and world order from premodern India, China and the Islamic world. This prequel to their 2019 book, The Making of Global International Relations, takes the story back from the two-century tale of modern IR, to reveal the deep global history of the discipline. It shows the multiple origins and meanings of many concepts thought of as only modern and Western. It opens pathways for the rest of the world into this most Eurocentric of disciplines, encouraging them to bring their own histories, concepts and theories with them. The authors have written this book with the hope of inspiring others to extend these pathways by bringing in a wider array of cultures, and exploring how they thought about and acted in worlds composed of multiple, independent, collective actors.

1. Introduction
2. Problems with the exercise
3. India
4. China
5. The Islamic world
6. Conclusions.

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