The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations

by Barry Buzan, George Lawson

The 'long nineteenth century' (1776–1914) was a period of political, economic, military and cultural revolutions that re-forged both domestic and international societies. Neither existing international histories nor international relations texts sufficiently register the scale and impact of this 'global transformation', yet it is the consequences of these multiple revolutions that provide the material and ideational foundations of modern international relations. Global modernity reconstituted the mode of power that underpinned international order and opened a power gap between those who harnessed the revolutions of modernity and those who were denied access to them. This gap dominated international relations for two centuries and is only now being closed. By taking the global transformation as the starting point for international relations, this book repositions the roots of the discipline and establishes a new way of both understanding and teaching the relationship between world history and international relations.

Genres: International Relations, History, Political Science, Politics, Academic, Nonfiction

416 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Barry Buzan is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (formerly Montague Burton Professor), and honorary professor at Copenhagen and Jilin Universities. In 1998 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He has written, co-authored or edited over twenty books, written or co-authored more than one hundred and thirty articles and chapters, and lectured, broadcast or presented papers in over twenty countries. Among his books are: People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (1983, revised 2nd edition 1991); The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (1993, with Charles Jones and Richard Little); Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998, with Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde); International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (2000, with Richard Little); Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003, with Ole Wæver); From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (2004); The Evolution of International Security Studies (2009, with Lene Hansen) and Non-Western International Relations Theory (2010, co-edited with Amitav Acharya). Work in progress includes The Global Transformation: The 19th Century and the Making of Modern International Relations (2013, with George Lawson).

Reviews

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction to the enormous transformation our world has gone through in the 19th century. The authors claim that the actual basis of our experiences with globalization is shaped by this transformation than any other global transformations that began in the 16th century or after the Second World War. The authors provide a good summary of changes in the political systems, communication, transport and arms technologies and of their cumulative impact on the societies.

The book is light on theory and heavy on facts, so much so that in some chapters you sense that it is running the risk of becoming a policy paper almost. The book is rare in terms of its emphasis on the combined but uneven development of the world, yet it wastes all the critical potential of this concept.

Especially in Chapter 9, oh the Chapter 9. After all the penetrating analyses by the authors, their naive theory of Decentred Globalization which they lay out in Chapter 9 delivers a blow to their credibility like a bull in a China shop. The authors who have been very sober so far, suddenly resort to wishful thinking, ignoring the underlying contradictions of the capitalist order and creating a much more optimistic, peaceful version of Negri and Hardt's "Empire".

Their theory goes like that:

i. The European-centric version of globalization and modernization created a world of regional inequalities. ii. A new phase began after the WWII where non-Western powers like China and Japan succeeded in modernizing themselves and created a global balance, decentralizing the global development. iii. Fall of communism eroded the ideological/economic divisions between the current and potential superpowers, making liberalism, nationalism and capitalism the mainstream. iv. Advances in the war-making technologies produced highly devastating weapons, as a result of which the countries will now be less willing to fight. v. Decentralized structure of the world economy won't allow any single power to become hegemonic anymore. The most powerful ones will choose collaboration over conflict to avoid economic and political instability.

because: "The world is more democratic and more open to trade than at any other time in human history" and "The world is returning to a more equal distribution of power akin to that which existed before the nineteenth century, except that in the twenty-first century the main centres of power are bound together in a tightly integrated international system."

Fast forward to 2020: Trump declares that globalization is over. Britain leaves EU. Governments steal masks and PPEs from each other during the pandemic. US tries to undermine and block Chinese investments in the west. Authoritarian, populist, fascist regimes everywhere.

[Begum Zorlu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a valuable book that provides a comprehensive account of change in international by focusing on the long 19th century.

One of the books main contributions is that it maps out three processes of change in international relations that has been the product of global transformation which are (p.3-4):

1) Industrialisation (which leads to the global extension of the market)

2) Rational state-formation (that takes place along with imperialism and a durable power gap, where rights were solely reserved for the "civilised" nations)

3) Formation of ideologies of progress (which provides strategies and legitimation for conducting international relations.)

This quote was particularly good and I used it in one of my seminars to start a discussion about the concept of balance of power in IR:

"The tripartite configuration that lay behind the global transformation (industrialization, rational state-building and ideologies of progress) not only generated a core–periphery global order, but also destabilised great power relations by exposing the balance of power to the pressures of rapid technological and social change, with the consequence of making balancing dynamics much more volatile."

The book also does a good job in focusing on cases to explore these processes.

[François Barré · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up after a Global History class, and it delivers. Buzan and Lawson show how the “long 19th century”—industrialization, state-building, and ideologies of progress under Western dominance—created the modern order. Rooted in the English School, they nod to ideas and discourse but make clear that material power, technology, and economy drove the transformation.

Yes, it’s repetitive, but the payoff is a serious, historically grounded account of IR’s foundations—far more credible than abstract theorizing. A good piece for anyone who's trying to piece out how the modern global order came to be.