ABSTRACT
This essay is based on the assumption, which underlay William McNeill’s pioneering The Rise of the West (1963), and which was further articulated by Geoffrey Barraclough, Introduction to Contemporary History (1967), that the normal condition of world politics is neither domination by the power and culture of a single civilization, nor even the bipolar model which had become fashionable during the era of the Cold War, but international anarchy. 1 From this perspective the age of Western dominance that came to an end about the middle of the twentieth century was both transient and artificial. It therefore has to be explained.
