ABSTRACT
Our present global states system, and the European one out of which it developed, are not the only ones we know about. Independent states have existed and have had dealings with one another in the past, both in war and in peace. Inevitably they evolved regular ways of talking to and bargaining with one another. Sometimes we find a number of independent states who had close and continuous dealings, and who thus constituted a regular states system. For instance, the city states of classical Greece, the kingdoms of ancient China and the more diverse states of India developed such international systems.
