Angel Martinez’s Reviews > The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations > Status Update

Britain's Parliament and state of affairs (as the British state modernized) during the 1600s was led not by a mercantilist bourgeoisie, but by a capitalist aristocracy.

What made them capitalist? They rented out land to capitalist tenants in enclosed plots of land. The reinvestment in the means of agricultural production meant fewer hands needed to produce agricultural output.

Treaty of Westphalia as the internationalization of the German constitution is a new perspective I hadn't heard before 🤔

One of my fave things about this book has been how it connects internal (within a state) and external (between states and in the int'l system) development.

Author also understands the importance of developing a theory of social change

"The persistence of coercive agrarian extraction [Middle Ages] meant that noble appropriation remained ... territorially extensive & politically intensive. Precisely because direct producers remained in possession of the means of subsistence, the capitalist logic of systematic cost-cutting (replacing labor w tech innovations & resultant productivity ⬆️predicated on systematic reinvestments, couldn't take hold" (111).

tbh didnt know jack (besides maybe about Charlemagne) about the Carolignian Empire before this but now im interested. social relations back then really are a bit weird to fathom for my 21st century mind, accustomed to 21st century social relations. some serfs actually were free because they were able to arm and defend themselves. knights didnt pop up until the 10th-11th century as part of the feudal revolution

medieval geopolitical system:
- no int'l/domestic, economic/political dichotomy
- based on relations btwn lords & peasants
- lords organized into 'state of associated persons'
- logic of political accumulation (lord-peasant, lord-lord)
- noble right to bear arms means no monopoly of violence held by this 'state'

"... Weber's historical sociology first and foremost serves comparison by constructing ideal types under which the most diverse historical and geographical cases can be subsumed and stored away. This... implies the transformation of history as an open process into history as a database furnishing evidentiary material for a series of systematized taxonomies. This is the death of history as becoming" (50-51).

Chapter 2 (A Theory of Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages) thesis: "... nature and dynamics of international systems are governed by the character of their constitutive units, which, in turn, rests on the specific property relations prevailing within them" (46).

According to Kenneth Waltz Neorealism treats IR as a separate sphere of human activity, thereby externalizing anything that falls outside of its 'theoretical' scope, leaving history as something to impose neorealism on, rather than history as something for neorealism to integrate.