INTRODUCTION

This enquiry is designed as a contribution to our understanding of how systems of states

function. An understanding of how the contemporary society of states came to be what it

is, and how it may develop in the future, requires a sense of how other societies operated

and developed in the past. But we will not gain much understanding if we merely trace

our present arrangements back in time. We need to examine the different patterns of

relations between states in their own individuality and on their own merits; and then

compare them.