ABSTRACT
Our review of almost three millennia of European history has yielded a number of conclusions, besides the most obvious one that each of the periods considered shows not only features distinguishing it from all others, but also a remarkable spectrum of variation within itself. Diversity is thus the hallmark, rather than uniformity or immutability, and we can clearly dismiss all theories of International Relations (IR) built on the assumption of a ‘striking sameness in the quality of international life through the millennia’ (Kenneth Waltz quoted in Andreas Osiander, Chapter 2, this volume).
