ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the implications of the discipline's dependence on European perceptions of time. The religious connotations of time, particularly its coincidence with the sovereign, never left secular European imperial ambitions. The tone was set at the so-called discovery of the Americas, which ushered in faith in European superiority, followed by ascendancy, and non-European inferiority, followed by subordination. In theory, the violence of confrontation has been ascribed to anarchy and the requirements of life in the proverbial state of nature, while the effects of this violence are frequently filed under tragedy. International relations does not depend on either constitutional self-understandings by states or observances of international legal stipulations on global coexistence. Language, legal institutions, and armament work in this chapter as technologies of power. When native resistance countered the colonial plan, the end of repression was presented in multiple ways, depending on the imperial power.
