ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book engages with and builds on recent historiographic developments in presenting a new perspective on international relations in the early modern age by reintegrating the role of ideology into the study of foreign policy. It takes a phenomenological approach to the concept of ideology; no attempt has been made to provide a definition that would do full justice to ideology in the early modern age. Ideology is normally associated with the period after the French Revolution and regarded as a modern concept. The book claims that political and economic ideology emerged in foreign policy in the century following the Peace of Westphalia. It focuses on how ideology could play a role in international relations in a period usually associated with a process of de-ideologisation of the international system during a transformative stage in European interstate relations.
