Lesson 4: The Global Interstate System

LESSON 4:
THE GLOBAL
INTERSTATE
SYSTEM
MAKE A DIAGRAM, AN ILLUSTRATION OR A WEB THAT
REVEALS YOUR UNDERSTANDING ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF
GLOBALIZATION ON GOVERNMENTS AND CITIZENS OF THE
WORLD.
THE GLOBAL INTERSTATE SYSTEM
It is the whole system of human

interactions. The world economy is now
all the economic interactions of all the
people on Earth, not just international
trade and investment. The modern world-
system is structured politically as
an interstate system – a system of
competing and allying states.
WHAT IS CIVILIZATION?
 ‘Civilization is a sort of ocean, constituting the

wealth of a people, and on whose bosom all the
elements of the life of that people, all the powers
supporting its existence, assemble and unite’ –Guizot
 John Stuart Mill suggested by contrast that there was
but a single model of civilization ... he located in
Europe since ‘all [the elements of civilization] exist
in modern Europe, and especially in Great Britain, in
a more eminent degree… than at any other place or
time.
IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL
LAW
 Martti Koskenniemi and Antony Anghie—
International Law was designed as an aid to the
preservation of order among sovereign states,
and its principles were explicitly stated as
applying only to civilized states
 Henry Wheaton (1845) talked in terms of the
‘international law of Christianity’ versus ‘the law
used by Mohammedan Powers’; such pluralism
had all but vanished.
W. E. Hall, international law ‘is a product
of the special civilization of modern Europe
and forms a highly artificial system of
which the principles cannot be supposed to
be understood or recognized by countries
differently civilized…
Such states only can be presumed to be
subject to it as are inheritors of that
civilization.
Thus conceived, international law faced the
issue of the relationship between a civilized
Christendom and the non-civilized world.
States could join the magic circle through
the doctrine of international recognition,
which took place when ‘a state is brought
by increasing civilization within the realm
of law.’
 In the 1880s James Lorimer suggested there were three categories
of humanity:
 civilized
 barbaric
 savage
 Thus, have three corresponding grades of recognition (plenary
political; partial political; natural, or mere human).
 Most Victorian commentators believed that barbaric states might
be admitted gradually or in part. Westlake proposed, for instance,
that: ‘Our international society exercises the right of admitting
outside states to parts of its international law without necessarily
admitting them to the whole of it.’ Others disagreed: entry ‘into
the circle of law-governed countries’ was a formal matter, and
‘full recognition’ all but impossible.
 Victorian international law divided the world
according to its standard of civilization. Inside
Europe—and in other areas of the world
colonized by Europeans—there was the (1)
sphere of civilized life: this meant—roughly—
the protection of property; (2) the rule of law on
the basis—usually—of codes or constitutions;
(3) effective administration of its territory by a
state; (4) warfare conducted by a regular army;
and (5) freedom of conscience.
 International law is the set of rules generally regarded
and accepted as binding in relations between states and
between nations. It serves as a framework for the
practice of stable and organized international relations.
 International law differs from state-based legal
systems in that it is primarily applicable to countries
rather than to private citizens.
 National law may become international law
when treaties delegate national jurisdiction
to supranational tribunals such as the European Court of
Human Rights or the International Criminal Court.
 Treaties such as the Geneva Conventions may require
national law to conform to respective parts.
THE LAWS OF WAR
 The laws of war, codified by the Great Powers at

length at the end of the nineteenth century, were
designed to minimize the severity of conflicts
between civilized states.
 But where no reciprocity of civilized behavior
could be expected, European armies were taught
they need not observe them—or indeed in some
versions—any rules at all.
 Britain’s General J.F.C. Fuller noted that ‘in
small wars against uncivilized nations, the form
of warfare to be adopted must tone with the
shade of culture existing in the land, by which I
mean that, against people possessing a low
civilization, war must be more brutal in type.’
 The 1914 British Manual of Military Law, too,
emphasized that ‘rules of International Law
apply only to warfare between civilized
nations… They do not apply in wars with
uncivilized states and tribes.’
 Until after the First World War, it was axiomatic
that ‘international law is a product of the special
civilization of modern Europe itself.’ The United
States was, by the century’s end, regarded from
this point of view as a European power, if not of
the first rank.
 Through the Roosevelt Corollary, it toughened
up its reading of the Monroe Doctrine, while at
the same time encouraging the pan American
codification of international law as a way of
enshrining its own regional hegemony
(DOMINATION).
It was only the Japanese who seriously
challenged the nineteenth century
identification of civilization with
Christendom.
Having adhered to several international
conventions, and revised their civil and
criminal codes, they managed to negotiate the
repeal of the unequal treaties from 1894
onwards, as well as to win back control over
their tariffs, and their victory over Russia in
1905 simply confirmed their status as a major
Power.
The Japanese achievement confirmed that
the standard of civilization being offered by
the Powers was capable of being met by
non-Christian, non-European states.
But could civilization (with a capital C)
really ever be universalized, and how far
could it be extended?
As for the empire-builders, in Africa, in
particular, as well as in the Pacific, many
liberals and Gladstonians came to terms
with imperialism at century’s because they
thought in terms of a kind of an imperial
cosmopolitanism or commonwealth, in
which individual peoples might preserve
their own distinctive cultures.

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LESSON 4:

It is the whole system of human

 ‘Civilization is a sort of ocean, constituting the

 The laws of war, codified by the Great Powers at

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