This chapter tells the story of how states first emerged in Europe and formed an interstate system that came to dominate global affairs. It describes the birth and evolution of the territorial state, and discusses how these political leviathans were transformed from the personal property of kings into communities owned by their citizens. It also examines the evolution of two international systems that did not feature territorial states – imperial China and medieval Islam. Although the European state has become the dominant form of political organization, memories of the Chinese and Islamic alternatives continue to exert influence over the imagination of many Asians and Muslims.
1. The emergence of the European interstate system
The state is a political entity characterized by a clearly defined territory and population, sovereignty, and recognition by other states. It is the product of a particular historical experience.
a) The transition from Europe’s Middle Ages
- Medieval Europe was a feudal system characterized by a hierarchy of political and social relationships, with the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor at the top of the hierarchy.
- A war-fighting class of knights and a new class of urban merchants emerged during this era. Kings and princes used these classes to accumulate wealth and security in order to resist the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor and to create large territorial kingdoms.
b) The world of Machiavelli: Italy's city-states
Confucianism and the values it celebrates have played a pivotal role in the evolution of East Asia’s economies. Tensions between these values and western values surfaced most remarkably during Asia’s 1997–98 economic crisis.
- The Italian city-state was an alternative form of political organization that, for a time, competed with larger territorial states.
- City-states disappeared from the European political landscape because they were too small to compete economically or militarily against larger territorial states.
c) On the road to sovereignty
- Europe’s religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries finally established the notion of the sovereign state.
- As a result of conflict arising from the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter Reformation in the 16th century and the Thirty Years’ War in the 17th century, princes were granted the power to determine the religion of their subjects and war fought over religion was outlawed.
- In this new era, sovereignty was invested in the ruler, meaning the monarch had absolute authority within his or her state.
d) From dynastic to popular sovereignty
- After the French Revolution (1789–1799) sovereignty shifted from the monarch to the people.
- Nationalism became a prominent political force in this era; people who felt a common bond of language, shared history, religion, and even kinship, as the French did, used the state to defend their nation and improve its status and well-being.
- Nationalism and democracy took hold in Western Europe, but in the east revolutionary efforts to overthrow conservative monarchs failed
2. China: the Confucian empire
a) Imperial China
- In contrast to Europe, for much of its history, China’s political system was a hierarchical empire. China viewed itself as the center of the world and consequently believed that all peoples were subject to its emperor and owed tribute to him. There was no distinction between independent states, or between foreign and domestic affairs.
- China’s effective isolation from the West eroded in the late nineteenth century and its imperial system was overthrown in the early twentieth century.
b) Asian versus Western values
Confucianism and the values it celebrates have played a pivotal role in the evolution of East Asia's economies. Tensions between these values and western values surfaced most remarkably during Asia's 1997–98 economic crisis.
- Western values
- Western values favor unfettered capitalism, individual self-realization, limited government, and political democracy.
- These ideas were given a boost in the 1980s by Western leaders who embraced the idea that, if left alone, markets would solve most economic problems and that democracy and economic development were reinforcing processes.
- Asian values
- Asia is a region with diverse cultures, but a shared belief that Western values are unsuited to Asian conditions and traditions.
- Asian values are more communitarian than individualistic and reject the idea that democracy necessarily leads to development. Thus, Asia’s alternative path to economic growth has featured a high degree of state involvement in economic decisions.
3. Islam’s founding and expansion: a nonstate alternative
a) The Caliphate
Islam enjoys a long and illustrious past beginning with the birth of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Islam spread out of Arabia across North Africa and into Persia, Mesopotamia, and Spain.
b) Cracks in the Islamic community
- The Sunni-Shia split began when Ali assumed the caliphate after the murder of his predecessor.
- Shias believed that Ali was the last legitimate caliph and that the Caliphate should pass down only to direct descendants of Muhammad whereas Sunnis did not demand that the caliph be a direct descendent of Muhammad, and were prepared to follow Arabic tribal customs in government.
c) Islam and Christendom: the Crusades
The collision between Western Christianity and Islam continued in the three crusades to the Holy Land.
d) The Ottoman Empire—Islam versus the West
Turkey’s Ottoman Empire became the heir to the Caliphate. It spread vigorously from the thirteenth century into the Byzantine Empire and collided with Europe’s states. As European states rose in power the Ottoman Empire began to decline.
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Q1 How did the interstate system emerge in Europe?
A1 The interstate system gradually began to emerge in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. Europe's feudal system in which each level of society owed obligations to those above and below it lacked any conception of "foreign" and "domestic" realms. However, conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman (Catholic) Church for supreme authority allowed local princes to maneuver between them and gain greater autonomy. Economic changes that created a commercial middle class in the cities of Northern Europe and Italy provided sources of funding necessary for princes to accumulate the military power needed to make them independent of their feudal vassals and resist the efforts of popes and Holy Roman emperors to limit their independence. Military innovations such as the introduction of gunpowder, cannon and crossbows doomed the heavily armored knights of Europe's Middle Ages and helped free princes from dependence on them. Finally, the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries that accompanied the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation ended in arrangements-- the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 and the Peace of Westphalia of 1648—that recognized the sovereign independence of the vassal states of the Holy Roman Empire and confirmed the power of large new territorial states in Western Europe, notably Spain and France.
Q2 What is state sovereignty, and how did the idea of sovereignty change?
A2 State sovereignty is the quality of legal independence. It has two dimensions: internal and external. The internal dimension entails legal authority over all the state's territory and inhabitants; the sovereign is legally supreme within a state's boundaries. The external dimension is a logical extension such internal supremacy which necessarily implies that all sovereigns are legally equal and that there is no earthly authority above states. It also implies that no sovereign can interfere in the domestic affairs of any other sovereign. Until the late 18th centuries, sovereignty was vested in monarchs, and states and subjects were regarded as the monarchs' property. The American and French Revolutions accelerated the shift from dynastic to popular sovereignty; that is, the belief that the citizens of states, rather than monarchs, were the owners of the state and that authority flowed from them rather than from dynastic rulers.
Q3 What were the main features of China's imperial system of international relations?
A3 Unlike Europe's interstate system, China's empire was organized hierarchically and was ruled from the center by an emperor. Imperial China, which survived for millennia until its final collapse in 1911, saw itself as the center of the political and cultural universe. It viewed the world as a series of concentric circles, the closest consisting of states closely allied to China and the furthest those only tenuously linked to the "Middle Kingdom." For much of its history, China was influenced by the philosophy of Confucius, a philosophy that encouraged authoritarian but benevolent rule in which the emperor, analogous to a father of a family, enjoyed the "Mandate of Heaven" which he would lose is he mistreated his subjects. Elements of Confucianism survive to this day in Asian values which include a strong and paternalistic central government, state interference in political and economic life of society, and a belief in serving the needs of society as a whole rather than the individuals who comprise it. Such values contrast with Western liberal emphases on the individual and on limiting government intrusion in political and economic life.
Q4 How did Islam and the Islamic Caliphate emerge, and what were their main features?
A4 Islam arose in the tribal society of the Arabian Peninsula in the 6th century AD when the prophet Muhammad is said to have received a revelation from God (Allah) that is contained in the Muslim holy book, the Koran. Finding himself in conflict with some of the tribes of Mecca, Muhammad fled to Medina in 622. Following a period of conflict, Muhammad united the Arab tribes, and there began a period of rapid imperial expansion of Islam. After Muhammad's death, he was succeeded by a series elected rulers or caliphs who extended the Islamic community or umma into Persia, Byzantium, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. Abu Bakr, one of Muhammad's disciples, was the first caliph and is regarded by Sunni Muslims as the first legitimate ruler of the Islamic community. By contrast, Shia Muslims believe that only a relative of Muhammad could be a legitimate ruler of the Islamic community, and they regard Ali, who was the fourth caliph a cousin as well as son-in-law of Muhammad, as the first and last legitimate ruler of the faith. The split between Sunni and Shia Muslims continue to the present day and is reflected in violence between the two groups in contemporary Iraq and Lebanon. Today, Iran is the center of Shia Islam, while most Arabs are Sunni.
Q5 What were some of the main features in the historical relationship between Islam and the West?
A5 Although contacts between Europe and Islam were episodic until the 20th century, relations have rarely been peaceful. Between 1095 and 1291 Christian Europe launched a series of military campaigns, sanctioned by the Roman pope and called the Crusades that were intended to liberate the Holy Land, especially the city of Jerusalem, from Muslim rule. Although Christian outposts were established and Jerusalem was taken for a time, these campaigns were largely unsuccessful. Following the division of the Caliphate and a shift in power within Islam from Arabia to Turkey, the Ottoman Empire became the center of the Islamic community at the end of the 13th century and the Ottoman emperors became the caliphs of the community. Conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Europe's Christian rulers occurred repeatedly until the end of the empire after World War I. Under warrior emperors like Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottomans ruled an empire from Constantinople that at its peak included the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and extended from North Africa and the Middle East to the Balkans, reaching the walls of Vienna. Between the 15th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman Empire remained a major rival of Europe's increasingly powerful territorial states. Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the Ottomans became known as the "sick man of Europe," as its European rivals, especially Russia and Austria, seized areas that had been ruled by the Turks and pushed the Ottomans out of Europe and ultimately out of North Africa and the Middle East as well. Today, the history of conflict between Muslim Turkey and Christian Europe is reflected in the opposition of some Europeans to Turkey's application to join the European Union. In addition, Muslim militants like Osama bin Laden seek to overthrow the present interstate system and restore the ancient Islamic Caliphate. |
