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Chapter 4: When do we think global politics began?

This chapter questions the idea that global politics has an identifiable beginning, showing that such a claim assumes that we know what counts – and what does not count – as global politics. The chapter uses Mesopotamia – a historical area located around the Tigris-Euphrates river system – in the fourth to second millennium BCE as an illustrative example to re-examine debates about the emergence of the state as a political entity in the international system. The chapter shows how the ‘city-states’ in Mesopotamia were far more fluid spaces than is often imagined, blurring simplistic divisions between the inside and the outside. The chapter then connects this to broader issues about how we think about the past and go about identifying beginnings.

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Chapter Abstract

When do we think global politics began? This chapter questions the idea that global politics has an identifiable beginning, showing that such a claim assumes that we know what counts – and what does not count – as global politics. The chapter uses Mesopotamia – a historical area located around the Tigris-Euphrates river system – in the fourth to second millennium BCE as an illustrative example to re-examine debates about the emergence of the state as a political entity in the international system. The chapter shows how the ‘city-states’ in Mesopotamia were far more fluid spaces than is often imagined, blurring simplistic divisions between the inside and the outside. The chapter then connects this to broader issues about how we think about the past, and go about identifying beginnings.

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Further reading

Bhambra, Gurminder K. (2014) Connected Sociologies. London: Bloomsbury.
A global perspective on connections across time and space.
Cerny, Philip g., ed. (2023). Heterarchy in World Politics. London: Routledge.
Edited volume of several contributions that make the case for power in global politics as being heterarchical rather than purely hierarchical.
Conrad, Sebastian (2016) What Is Global History? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Introduction to thinking historically and globally. It also challenges thinking that believes that ‘levels’ or ‘scale’ of the social world are separate from each other.
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus and Daniel Nexon (1999) “Relations before states: substance, process, and the study of world politics.” European Journal of International Relations 5(3): 291-332.
Influential introduction to what relationism brings to understanding global politics.
Phillips, Andrew and Jason Sharman (2015) International Order in Diversity: War, Trade and Rule in the Indian Ocean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A study of how global politics functioned in the Indian Ocean region before the dominance of the British. Notes the diversity of actor-forms that were crucial.
Scott, James C. (2017) Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
A revisionist study of early ‘states’ and the contexts in which they emerged and existed.
Yoffee, Norman (2005) Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Overview of the debate around the concept of ‘state’ in the deeper past, including the influence of social evolution. Includes a case study of Mesopotamia.
Yoffee, Norman, ed. (2015) Early Cities in Comparative Perspective, 4000 BCE-1200 BCE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edited volume of chapters introducing several global examples of early ‘cities’, along with key themes in the scholarly debate around them.
Zarakol, Ayşe (2022) Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A study of notable Asian actors in global politics over the last 500 years. This also considers how global politics were ordered.

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Websites

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation
Regularly-updated National Geographic site covering global history and archaeology. Good introductory site for emerging issues.

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/index.asp
Internet History Sourcebooks Project, hosted by Fordham University. Extensive collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use. Includes several categories, including ancient history, region-specific history (e.g. Africa, East Asia), and thematic history (e.g. Lesbian and Gay, Science).

https://www.worldhistory.org/
World History Encyclopaedia. Non-profit online encyclopaedia of global history with a wide-range of articles and resources.