Insight Turkey
Insight Turkey
Challenging ideas
On Turkish politics and International affairs

Author

Sung Hee Ru

Sung Hee Ru
International Orders in the Early Modern World: Before the Rise of the West
April 1, 2015
This book is an in-depth study that investigates the international relations between the western and non-western world while challenging the Eurocentric ideas of modern international relations. Significantly, all authors demonstrate how non-western countries’ international relations are important to understand global history and why Westphalian-oriented international relations are misunderstood in the early modern era. The main idea in this book that contemporary international relations theories found it difficult to stand their fundamental ground on the notion that western countries are so dynamic, as western-centered global dominance is natural and eternal while non-western countries are static and passive that they do not play a leading role on the international stage. By analyzing not only “cross-cultural interactions” before the rise of the west but also various regional international orders in non-western regions, this volume convincingly shows there had been “lopsided,” “unilinear,” and “myopic” views of the international relationship context unlike the dominant IR theory of “cohesive,” “homogenous,” and “evolutionary” views. In this context, this book basically challenges the main ontological assumptions of Eurocentric IR scholars. As Ayla Göl argues, it is time to remove the “iron curtain” of misunderstanding of international relations between the west and non-western countries.

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