ABSTRACT
In our introductory chapter we suggested that modern international relations took their principal characteristics from the peace settlements that drew the Thirty Years War to a close in 1648. In this chapter we explore this claim in order to generate a basic introduction to some of the core features of international politics. We cannot offer a comprehensive history of modern international relations here but we can sketch a history of the rise and rise of a system of interaction between sovereign states that came to be the defining feature of global politics. The aim of IR scholars has been to derive from the history of world politics models of political interaction that can allow us to gain some critical purchase on the subject, or that can allow us to generalize about the nature of international relations. Because this is the principal aim of the student of IR detailed historical accounts of the period in question are often sacrificed in favour of an historical narrative that places heavy emphasis on key features of that history that are said to provide us with insights into the general character of international society in the modern period. It is the case that there is some disagreement about what the key features of modern IR are, or how best to understand them. Nevertheless there is a basic history of IR that you need to be familiar with even if you must treat it critically.
