The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations

Capa
Verso, 2003 - 308 páginas
The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is widely interpreted as the foundation of modern international relations. Benno Teschke exposes this as a myth. In the process he provides a fresh re-interpretation of the making of modern international relations from the eighth to the eighteenth century. Inspired by the groundbreaking historical work of Robert Brenner, Teschke argues that social property relations provide the key to unlocking the changing meaning of international across the medieval, early modern, and modern periods. He traces how the long-term interaction of class conflict, economic development, and international rivalry effected the formation of the modern system of states. Yet instead of identifying a breakthrough to interstate modernity in the so-called long sixteenth century or in the period of intensified geopolitical competition during the seventeenth century, Teschke shows that geopolitics remained governed by dynastic and absolutist political communities, rooted in feudal property regimes. The Myth of 1648 argues that the onset of specifically modern international relations only began with the conjunction of the rise of capitalism and modern state-formation in England. Thereafter, the English model caused the restructuring of the old regimes of the Continent. This was a long-term process of socially uneven development, not completed until World War I.
 

Conteúdo

Introduction
1
The Core Theoretical Argument
7
Structure of the Argument
8
Origins and Evolution of the Modern StatesSystem The Debate in International Relations Theory
13
2 Structural Neorealism
14
3 Historicizing Realism
16
Undermining Westphalia Reinstating Anarchy
26
4 Historicizing Constructivism
27
2 A Critique of the Commercialization Model
137
Solutions and Problems
139
2 Capitalism and the Modern State
142
3 Capitalism and the Modern StatesSystem
144
LEtat cest moi The Logic of Absolutist State Formation
151
Transition or NonTransition?
153
2 The Revisionist SocietyCentred Critique
155
The EquilibristTransitional Paradigm
157

Property Rights Epistemes Contingency
28
5 NeoEvolutionary Historical Sociology
32
6 NeoMarxist IR Theory
39
Towards a New Theory of the Making of Modern International Relations
42
A Theory of Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages
46
2 The Relation between the Economic and the Political in Feudal Society
49
2 From the Logic of Production to the Logic of Exploitation
53
3 The StructureAgent Problem in Feudal Terms
57
2 Contradictory Strategies of Reproduction Agency
59
3 A Culture of War based upon Political Accumulation
61
2 The Political Economy of Medieval Territory and Frontiers
65
Mediaeval Feuding as Legal Redress
67
Beyond Anarchy and Hierarchy
69
1 Banal Domestic and Landlordship
70
Geopolitical Systems as Social Systems
73
The Medieval Making of a MultiActor Europe
76
2 The Carolingian Empire
80
2 Frankish Dual Social Property Relations
81
3 Frankish Political Accumulation
83
3 Explaining the Transition from Imperial Hierarchy to Feudal Anarchy
84
2 The Feudal Revolution of the Year 1000 and the Rise of the Banal Regime
86
4 A New Mode of Exploitation
88
2 Military Innovations and the Origins of the Knightly Class
89
3 Changes in Noble Proprietary Consciousness and the Making of Noble Excess Cadets
90
4 Conquest of Nature Conquest of People
91
5 PostCrisis Feudal Expansion as Geopolitical Accumulation Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries
95
Socially Combined and Geographically Uneven Development
97
2 The Spanish Reconquista
99
3 The German Ostsiedlung
101
4 The Papal Revolution and the Crusades
102
5 The Norman Conquest and Unitary English State Formation
104
from the Capetian Domain State to Royal Consolidation
107
The Medieval Making of a MultiActor Europe
109
Transitions and NonTransitions to Modernity A Critique of Rival Paradigms
116
2 The Geopolitical Competition Model
117
1 The Military Logic of State Formation
118
Theoretical Pluralism Historical Contingencies
121
2 Modernity? Which Modernity? A Critique of the Geopolitical Competition Model
122
3 The Demographic Model
127
4 The Commercialization Model
129
Westphalia under Dutch Hegemony
133
Excursus Perry Andersons Subterranean Transition to Capitalism
158
4 Political Marxists and the Critique of the Bourgeois Paradigm
165
3 The Development and Nature of French Absolutism
167
1 The Transition from Feudalism to Absolutism
168
2 Absolutist Sovereignty as Proprietary Kingship
171
3 Office Venality as Alienation of State Property
173
4 Political Institutions in Early Modern France
177
5 Legibus Solutus?
179
6 The Costs and Consequences of War
181
7 The Military Constitution of the Old Regime
184
The Modernizing Limits of Absolutism
189
The EarlyModern International Political Economy Mercantilism and Maritime EmpireBuilding
197
Mercantilism as Commercial Capitalism
198
3 The Class Character of SeaBorne Trade and its Geopolitical Implications
201
4 Did Mercantilism Promote Capitalism?
205
Uniform Economic Territories?
209
The Wealth of the State versus the Wealth of the Nation
210
Demystifying the Westphalian StatesSystem
215
2 Structure and Agency in the Westphalian Order
218
The Absolutist State Property Relations and Economic NonDevelopment
219
Political and Geopolitical Strategies of Accumulation
220
Foreign Policy as Dynastic Family Business
222
Parity or Ranking?
223
Dynastic Unions and Wars of Succession
225
3 Dynastic Rules of Succession as Public International Law
227
4 Circulating Territories Circulating Princes
230
5 Dynastic Predatory Equilibrium and the Balance of Power
233
Balancing or Compensatory Equilibrium?
236
6 Demystifying the Peace of Westphalia
238
2 Restoration versus Modernity
239
3 Dynastic Collective Security System versus the Balance of Power
243
The End of 1648
245
Towards the Modern StatesSystem International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism
249
2 The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in England
250
3 The Glorious Revolution and Modern Sovereignty
252
Capitalism Modern Sovereignty and Active Balancing
256
5 Geopolitically Combined and Socially Uneven Development
262
The Dialectic of International Relations
271
Bibliography
276
Index
297
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Benno Teschke is Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the University of Sussex. He was previously a Lecturer in the Department of International Relations & Politics at the University of Wales, Swansea, and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History at UCLA. Benno received his PhD from the Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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