Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World

by Akira Iriye

The "global community" is a term we take for granted today. But how did the global community, both as an idea and as a reality, originate and develop over time? This book examines this concept by looking at the emergence, growth, and activities of international organizations--both governmental and nongovernmental--from the end of the nineteenth century to today. Akira Iriye, one of this country's most preeminent historians, proposes a significant rereading of the history of the last fifty years, suggesting that the central influence on the international scene in this period was not the Cold War, but rather a deepening web of international interactions. This groundbreaking book, the first systematic study of international organizations by a historian, moves beyond the usual framework for studying international relations--politics, war, diplomacy, and other interstate affairs--as it traces the crucial role played by international organizations in determining the shape of the world today.

Iriye's sweeping discussion of international organizations around the world examines multinational corporations, religious organizations, regional communities, transnational private associations, environmental organizations, and other groups to illuminate the evolution and meaning of the global community and global consciousness.

While states have been preoccupied with their own national interests such as security and prestige, international organizations have been actively engaged in promoting cultural exchange, offering humanitarian assistance, extending developmental aid, protecting the environment, and championing human rights. In short, they have made important contributions to making the world a more interdependent and peaceful place. This book, tracing the development of the global community in a truly innovative way, will win a wide readership among those interested in understanding the growing phenomenon of globalization and its meaning for us today. Global Community is based on Iriye's Jefferson lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Grad School

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Akira Iriye is an historian of American diplomatic history especially United States-East Asian relations, and international issues. A graduate of Haverford College and Harvard University, he taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago before accepting an appointment as Professor of History at Harvard University in 1989, where he became Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991. He was Director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies from 1991 through 1995. He served as President of the American Historical Association in 1988, and has also served as president for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

Reviews

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched book covering an important issue, but ultimately one let down by the writing style of the author. Iriye proposes that international organizations are creating an "alternative world" away from the body of the nation state, a proposition which I am intrigued by. However, he believes that the new world of the organizations will be morally superior to the old, pointing out that the blood on the hands of the international organizations is minimum and that they fight with ideas not bullets. However, without power nationalists are the same. If there were no nations, we would fight, with guns, over the ideas of organisations. To say otherwise is to be too idealistically liberal. Would have also liked to have seen more discussion of the anti-nuclear protests of the 1980s.

[Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iriye presents something of an alternative picture to accounts of the 20th-century that focus predominately on great-power politics, by choosing instead to trace the growth in non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations. The upshot: governments aren't the only big players in politics any more, and in fact, they haven't been for quite awhile now; we just haven't been telling the story very accurately. Furthermore, NGOs have helped keep important issues on the table (say, human rights and the environment) that otherwise have been ignored by governments, and thus have been agents for positive change.
Overall, Iriye's presentation is a little simplistic, and as I wrote in a recent paper, his "world seems to function through a formula of 'more international organizations equals more awareness of interdependence equals more peace.'" While to some extent this might be true, it tends to ignore all the complexities of globalisation, including the fact that 'interdependence' can just as often mean 'relationships of forced dependence and subjugation.'
Perhaps this simplicity makes sense, in that Iriye states that he is attempting to interest fellow historians in the role of NGOs in recent world history (while other disciplines, say sociology, have taken NGOS up for study, history has largely ignored them). And as his work seems to cry out "Problematise me! Problematise me!", perhaps he'll achieve that goal.

[N.W. Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative, insightful, but ultimately really dry.