International Systems in World History

This book tells the 60000 year story of how humankind evolved from a scattering of hunter-gatherer bands to todays highly integrated global international political economy. It traces the evolution of ever-wider economic societal and military-political international systems and the interplay between these systems and the tribes city states empires and modern states into which humans have organised themselves. Buzan and Little marry a wide range of mainstream International Relations theories to a world historical perspective. They mount a stinging attack on International Relations as a discipline arguing that its Eurocentrism historical narrowness and theoretical fragmentation have reduced almost to nothing both its cross-disclipinary influence and its ability to think coherently about either the past or the future. Seeking to emulate and challenge the cross-disciplinary influence of the world systems model the book recasts the study of International Relations into a macro-historical perspective shows how its core concepts work across time and sets out a new theoretical agenda and a new intellectual role for the discipline.