Introduction: Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s

Abstract

During the past two decades the discussions on world order have taken interesting turns. The collapse of the cold war constellation gave neoliberal visions of accelerating economic integration and global democratization a certain prominence within academic circles and a wider public sphere. For many observers the fall of the Berlin Wall and the removal of the iron curtain signified a future with the potential to grow into an era characterized by free trade, migration, and an ever-more tightly knit web of human interaction. Many deemed ideological fault lines and geopolitical rivalries to be outdated by the potentials that a new era of globalization brought to the international community. It was this optimistic branch of the late 1980s and early 1990s that brought widespread public attention to new programmatic terms ranging from “global village” to the “end of history” first and foremost in the United States but also in other parts of the world.1 At that time a majority of Chinese intellectuals, for example, supported a new “Enlightenment” effort, widespread Westernization and internationalization programs for their society.2 And in most countries of the former Warsaw Pact, liberal democratic parties won national elections—public endorsements to bring their societies closer to a more Western and more global world.3