Lawson: The Rise of Modern International Order

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers the rise of modern international order, the historical origins of global systems, the 'global transformation' of the nineteenth century, and the emergence of global inequality and interdependence.

International Order

Regularized practices of exchange between political units, which can be sparse or intensive, hierarchical or equal, and formal or informal.

Political Multiplicity

The condition in international politics where multiple political units are forced to coexist in the absence of an overarching authority.

The West

A term usually referring to Europe (specifically northern and western parts) and the Americas (specifically the United States).

Sumer

The site of the earliest recorded international orders, located in modern-day Iraq, where sedentary communities established regularized practices of exchange 5,000 to 6,000 years ago.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

The agreement that ended the wars of religion in Europe, often cited as the origin of modern international order for establishing the principle of sovereign territoriality.

cuius regio, eius religio

A principle instituted by the Peace of Westphalia meaning 'whose realm, their religion', which limited the reasons for state intervention.

Sovereign Territoriality

A claim to political authority over a particular geographical space.

Triangular Trade

A regional international order in the Atlantic involving the demand for sugar in London, the plantation system in the Caribbean, and the supply of African slaves and North American provisions.

Global Transformation

The shift during the nineteenth century from a world of multiple regional international systems to one characterized by a single global international order.

Great Divergence

The rapid shift in global power during the nineteenth century where the West became significantly wealthier and more powerful than Asian powers.

Steam Power

The capture of inanimate sources of energy that enabled the biggest increase in the availability of power sources for several thousand years, central to the first wave of industrialization.

Rational State

A state organized through abstract bureaucracies like a civil service and nationally organized military, rather than interpersonal relations and family ties.

Imperialism

An international process where Western states claimed overseas territory, eventually controlling 80 per cent of the world's land surface (excluding Antarctica) by the start of the First World War.

Prime Meridian Conference (1884)

A meeting in Washington that established world standard time to ease the integration of trade, diplomacy, and communication.

Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs)

Permanent features of international order, such as the International Telecommunications Union (1865), created to manage international coordination and standardization.

Scientific Racism

A nineteenth-century belief system that sought to establish a political hierarchy based on biological markers like skin colour or bloodline.

Global Colour Line

A term describing an international order premised on racial discrimination, popularized by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Occupation

A legal concept in nineteenth-century international law where property belonging to nobody (terra nullius) becomes the property of the first person to take it, used to justify imperialism.

Universality

A legal concept used by opponents of imperialism to claim their territories were already occupied and to argue for the right to self-determination.

Century of Humiliation

A period in Chinese history during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked by destructive Western imperialism, unequal treaties, and major domestic rebellions.

Meiji Restoration

A radical nineteenth-century Japanese program of rapid modernization and reorientation toward imperialism under the slogan fukoku kyohei (rich country, strong military).

fukoku kyōhei

A Japanese slogan meaning 'rich country, strong military' that guided the Meiji oligarchy's modernization efforts.

Independency and Inequality

Two deepening features of the modern international order prompted by imperialism, industrialization, and the rise of rational states.