ABSTRACT
This book sets out to challenge the Eurocentric foundations of modern International Relations (IR) scholarship by examining international relations in the early modern era, when European primacy had yet to develop in many parts of the globe. Through a series of regional case studies on East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Russia, this book explores patterns of cross-cultural exchange and civilizational encounters, placing particular emphasis upon historical contexts when ‘the rest’ often set the terms of engagement and encounter with the West and where European elites found it difficult to impose their preferred modes of interaction upon their counterparts in other continents. The chapters of this book document and analyse a series of regional international orders that were primarily defined by local interests, agendas and institutions, with European interlopers often playing a secondary role.
