Global IR Meets Global History: Sovereignty, Modernity, and the International System’s Expansion in the Indian Ocean Region

Abstract

International relations (IR) scholars commonly accept the sovereign state’s ubiquity today as the endpoint of a centuries-long process of modernization, spearheaded by European imperialism. Through this schema, European military superiority enabled Westerners to first impose themselves on non-European societies in the early modern period. The later spread of Western conceptions of national self-determination then compelled global convergence toward the sovereign state form after 1945. Conversely, I argue here that such accounts overstate the West’s margin of military superiority over non-Europeans throughout the age of empire. As a result, they also exaggerate European latitude in imposing their preferred institutional forms on conquered societies and mischaracterize the character of colonial modernity. Drawing inspiration from global history and harnessing illustrations from the Indian Ocean region, I argue that Western imperialism was critically mediated by Europeans’ alliances of convenience with indigenous partners. This dependence on local allies persisted throughout the colonial era as Western imperialists leveraged local institutions and conceptions of political legitimacy to perpetuate colonial rule. Acknowledging this reality forces us to critically revisit conventional narratives about the sovereign state system’s universalization, and to foreground hybridity over homogenization as global modernity’s master theme.