Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders

Abstract

International relations (IR) research has increasingly explored non-Eurocentric histories by analyzing, for example, different historical international systems, societies, and orders beyond Europe, as well as the agency of non-Western polities in constituting world politics (see Phillips and Sharman 2015; Hobson 2020; Spruyt 2020). Before the West contributes to this burgeoning literature. Zarakol offers a longue durée “account of the history of Eastern ‘international relations’” (p. 6), focusing on the interactions between Eurasian polities and the rise and fall of Eurasian world orders between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The analysis starts with the rise of the Mongols and their conquests across Eurasia, resulting in the establishment of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. This historical event constituted the foundation for three successive Eurasian world orders to emerge: the Chinggisid world order of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the post-Chinggisid world order, consisting of the Timurid Empire (Iran and Central Asia) and the Ming Dynasty (China) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and the “global” post-Timurid world order of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which incorporated Eurasian and European polities.