TY - JOUR
AU - Arian, Anahita
AB - International relations (IR) research has increasingly explored non-Eurocentric histories by analyzing, for example, different historical international systems, societies, and orders beyond Europe, as well as the agency of non-Western polities in constituting world politics (see Phillips and Sharman 2015; Hobson 2020; Spruyt 2020). Before the West contributes to this burgeoning literature. Zarakol offers a longue durée “account of the history of Eastern ‘international relations’” (p. 6), focusing on the interactions between Eurasian polities and the rise and fall of Eurasian world orders between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The analysis starts with the rise of the Mongols and their conquests across Eurasia, resulting in the establishment of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. This historical event constituted the foundation for three successive Eurasian world orders to emerge: the Chinggisid world order of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the post-Chinggisid world order, consisting of the Timurid Empire (Iran and Central Asia) and the Ming Dynasty (China) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and the “global” post-Timurid world order of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which incorporated Eurasian and European polities. According to Zarakol, the rise of these world orders relied on the Chinggisid sovereignty model. During the Mongol Empire, particularly under the reign of Genghis Khan, Chinggisid sovereignty involved “the extreme centralization of power and authority” (p. 18) in a ruler that claimed universal sovereignty, territorial expansion through conquest (accompanied by a “preoccupation with astronomy and astrology”; p. 19), and external recognition of the ruler as a world conqueror and universal sovereign. This sovereignty model outlived the collapse of the Mongol Empire and continued—albeit in various forms—to constitute and inform the two subsequent post-Mongol world orders. Through this discussion, Zarakol demonstrates that a prototype of the contemporary conception of sovereignty existed in Asia long before the birth of the Westphalian order in Europe. Sovereignty was, therefore, not the prerogative of early modern Europe. The decline of these three world orders resulted not only from political dynamics within the empires that constituted them, but also from structural dynamics, such as pandemical, climatological, environmental, demographic, and macro-economic changes. The Black Death, for example, contributed to the collapse of the Chinggisid world order, while climatological and environmental changes assisted the decline of the post-Chinggisid and post-Timurid (Little Ice Age) world orders. Given that scholars have neglected climatological and environmental structural dynamics when studying the rise and fall of historical world orders, Zarakol's analysis offers a novel contribution to research in this area. Despite its novel, rich, and thought-provoking interpretation of the history of international relations in Asia, Before the West raises numerous points that require further reflection and development. First, although its non-Eurocentric focus is indispensable, its heavy reliance on Western revisionist Mongol historiography can create problems. This literature overstates (in positive terms) the Mongols’ historical significance and legacy, while downplaying their genocidal destruction of the societies and civilizations that resisted them throughout Eurasia. A balanced historical reading also raises the question whether the “Chinggisid sovereignty model” was indeed hybridized with other cultural repertoires? Or, whether, apart from claims of genealogical descendance, the Mongol repertoire for the legitimization of political authority was increasingly overshadowed and displaced by the resurgence of prominent pre-Mongol Islamic, Sufi, and ancient Persian repertoires in the Timurid Empire, and Confucian repertoires in the Ming dynasty? This displacement was complete in the post-Timurid world order, whose Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal sahibkirans—universal sovereigns—predominantly legitimized their political authority and sovereignhood with Islamic and/or Persianate repertoires. Considering these and other historical realities, the inventive account about the Mongols’ legacy—enshrined in the “Chinggisid sovereignty model” lasting over 500 years in Eurasia—risks paralleling Westphalian mythistory. Second, the conceptualization of Chinggisid sovereignty also raises the question of what exactly made this sovereignty “Chinggisid”? All of the various features of Chinggisid sovereignty, with perhaps tanistry as an exception, existed prior to the Mongols’ ascent. Indeed, many of the pre-Islamic and Islamic rulers preceding the Mongols attached value to territorial expansion, waged wars of conquest, centralized political authority in various ways (including the usurpation of law-making authority, even though they were Islamic), used astronomers and astrologers in their courts to advise political decision-making, and attached importance to being recognized as universal sovereigns (e.g., as the “King of Kings” in a Persianate context, or as the Caliph in singularly Islamic contexts). Finally, given Zarakol's status as a world-leading scholar of hierarchy in world politics, it is surprising that Before the West contains no conceptualization of empire. This would have been highly productive. It would not only clarify a heavily employed term, but also contribute to the book's theorization of centralized political authority. Historically, empires have never completely centralized political authority due to their geographical sprawl; they consequently often governed—out of necessity—through local administrators and bureaucracies. How does this fit with the centralization of political authority that Zarakol sees as integral to Chinggisid sovereignty? A more nuanced, multilayered conception of political authority—via the interactions and political agency of the different layers (i.e., from the center to the distant/local)—may have helped here. After all, vertical and horizontal centralization and decentralization of political authority coexist simultaneously and manifest themselves organizationally and administratively in different ways in the political orders of empires. These considerations do not overshadow Zarakol's exceptional account, which familiarizes IR scholars and students with various important, yet unknown, empires that directed the history of Eurasian international relations. Another major contribution of the book is that it opens up various avenues for future conceptual–historical research on empires, political authority, sovereignty, and the history of international relations beyond the West. Notes This review was submitted in June 2022, when Dr. Arian was still affiliated with the Universität Erfurt and Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. References Hobson John M. 2020 . Multicultural Origins of the Global Economy: Beyond the West-Centric Frontier . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Phillips Andrew , Sharman Jason. 2015 . International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Spruyt Hendrik . 2020 . The World Imagined: Collective Beliefs and Political Order in Sinocentric, Islamic and Southeast Asian International Societies . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC © The Author(s) (2022). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) (2022). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association.
TI - Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders
JO - International Studies Review
DO - 10.1093/isr/viac059
DA - 2022-12-10
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/before-the-west-the-rise-and-fall-of-eastern-world-orders-Yg0FPqvkqh
VL - 24
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -