The Myth of 1648 - Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations

This book rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years' War but also inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the case. Domestic 'social property relations' shaped international relations in continental Europe down to 1789 and even beyond. The dynastic monarchies that ruled during this time differed from their medieval predecessors in degree and form of personalization, but not in underlying dynamic. 1648, therefore, is a false caesura in the history of international relations. For real change we must wait until relatively recent times and the development of modern states and true capitalism. In effect, it's not until governments are run impersonally, with no function other than the exercise of its monopoly on violence, that modern international relations are born. Introduction The Myth of 1648 The Core Theoretical Argument Structure of the Argument 1 Origins and Evolution of the Modern States-System: The Debate in International Relations Theory 1.1 Introduction: From Structure to History 1.2 Structural Neorealism Kenneth Waltz: History as Pererurial Structure 1.3. Historicizing Realism 1.3.1 Robert Gilpin: Systems Change as Rational Choice 1.3.2 Stephen Krasner: Undermining Westphalia, Reinstating Anarchy 1.4 Historicizing Constructivism John Gerard Ruggie: Property Rights, Epistemes, Contingency 1.5 Neo-Evolutionary Historical Sociology Hendrik Spruyt: Social Coalitions, Institutional Variations, and Neo-Evolutionary Selection 1.6 Neo-Marxist IR Theory Justin Rosenberg: Modernity as 'Structural Discontinuity' and Modernity as Process 1.7 Conclusion: Towards a New Theory of the Making of Modern International Relations 2. A Theory of Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Relation between the Economic and the Political in Feudal Society 2.2.1 Weber versus Marx: Type of Domination versus Extra-Economic Compulsion 2.2.2 From the Logic of Production to the Logic of Exploitation 2.3 The Structure-Agent Problem in Feudal Terms 2.3.1 Lordship as Conditional Property (Structure) 2.3.2 Contradictory Strategies of Reproduction (Agency) 2.3.3 A 'Culture of War' based upon Political Accumulation 2.4 A Phenomenology of Medieval 'International' Institutions 2.4.1 The Parcellized Sovereignty of the 'Medieval State' 2.4.2 The Political Economy of Medieval Territory and Frontiers 2.4.3 War and Peace: Medieval Feuding as Legal Redress 2.5 Feudal 'International Systems': Beyond Anarchy and Hierarchy 2.5.1 Banal, Domestic, and Landlordship 2.5.2 Conditional Hierarchy, Personalized Anarchy, Territorial Anarchy 2.6 Conclusion: Geopolitical Systems as Social Systems 3. The Medieval Making of a Multi-Actor Europe 3.1 Introduction: From Hierarchy to Anarchy 3.2 The Carolingian Empire 3.2.1 The Patrimonial Nature of the Frankish State 3.2.2 Frankish Dual Social Property Relations 3.2.3 Frankish 'Political Accumulation' 3.3 Explaining the Transition from Imperial Hierarchy to Feudal Anarchy 3.3.1 The Demise of the Carolingian Empire 3.3.2 The 'Feudal Revolution' of the Year 1000 and the Rise of the Banal Regime 3.4 A New Mode of Exploitation 3.4.1 Predatory Lordship and the Rise of Serfdom 3.4.2 Military Innovations and the Origins of the Knightly Class 3.4.3 Changes in Noble Proprietary Consciousness and the Making of Noble Excess Cadets 3.4.4 Conquest of Nature - Conquest of People 3.5 Post-Crisis Feudal Expansion as Geopolitical Accumulation (Eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries) Excursus - Demographic Growth and the Urban Revival 3.5.1 Patterns of Expansion: Socially Combined and Geographically Uneven Development 3.5.2 The Spanish Reconquista 3.5.3 The German Ostsiedlung 3.5.4 The Papal Revolution and the Crusades 3.5.5 The Norman Conquest and Unitary English State Formation 3.5.6 France: from the Capetian 'Domain State' to Royal Consolidation 3.6 Conclusion: The Medieval Making of a Multi-Actor Europe 4. Transitions and Non-Transitions to Modernity: A Critique of Rival Paradigms 4.1 Introduction: The Rise of the West? 4.2 The Geopolitical Competition Model 4.2.1 The Military Logic of State Formation Excursus - Michael Mann: Theoretical Pluralism, Historical Contingencies 4.2.2 Modernity? Which Modernity? A Critique of the Geopolitical Competition Model 4.3 The Demographic Model 4.4 The Commercialization Model 4.4.1 Le Monde Braudelien: Le Capitalisme Depuis Toujours Excursus - Giovanni Arrighi: Westphalia Under Dutch Hegemony 4.4.2 A Critique of the Commercialization Model 4.5 Capitalism, the MoJem State, and the Modern States-System: Solutions and Problems 4.5.1 Capitalism as a Relation of Production 4.5.2 Capitalism and the Modern State 4.5.3 Capitalism and the Modern States-System 5. L'Etat, c'est moi!: The Logic of Absolutist State Formation 5.1 Introduction: Idealizing Absolutism 5.2 Debating Absolutism: Transition or Non-Transition? 5.2.1 The Traditional State-Centred Interpretation: The State as Rational Actor 5.2.2 The Revisionist Society-Centred Critique 5.2.3 The Orthodox Marxist Interpretation: The Equilibrist-Transitional Paradigm Excursus - Perry Anderson's Subterranean Transition to Capitalism 5.2.4 Political Marxists and the Critique of the 'Bourgeois Paradigm' 5.3 The Development and Nature of French Absolutism 5.3.1 The Transition from Feudalism to Absolutism 5.3.2 Absolutist Sovereignty as Proprietary Kingship 5.3.3 Office Venality as Alienation of State Property 5.3.4 Political Institutions in Early Modern France 5.3.5 Legibus Solutus? 5.3.6 The Costs and Consequences of War 5.3.7 The Military Constitution of the Old Regime 5.4 Conclusion: The Modernizing Limits of Absolutism 6. The Early Modern International Political Economy: Mercantilism and Maritime Empire-Building 6.1 Introduction: The 'Long Sixteenth Century• and Mercantilism 6.2 Theoretical Premises: Mercantilistn as Commercial Capitalism 6.3 The Class Character of Sea-Borne Trade and its Geopolitical Implications 6.4 Did Mercantilism Promote Capitalism? 6.5 Closed Trading States: Uniform Economic Territories? 6.6 Conclusion: The 'Wealth of the State' versus the 'Wealth of the Nation' 7. Demystifying the Westphalian States-System 7.1 Introduction: Theorizing the Constitution, Operation, and Transformation of Geopolitical Systems 7.2 Structure and Agency in the Westphalian Order 7.2.1 Structure: the Absolutist State, Property Relations, and Economic Non-Development 7.2.2 Agency: Political and Geopolitical Strategies of Accumulation 7.3 Westphalian Geopolitical Relations: Foreign Policy as Dynastic Family Business 7.3.1 Monarchia Universalis: Parity or Ranking? 7.3.2 'States' Marrying 'States': Dynastic Unions and Wars of Succession 7.3.3 Dynastic Rules of Succession as Public International Law 7.4 Circulating Territories, Circulating Princes 7.5 Dynastic Predatory Equilibrium and the Balance of Power 7.5.1 Dynastic Equilibrium qua Territorial Compensations 7.5.2 The Case of the Polish Partitions: Balancing or Compensatory Equilibrium? 7.6 Demystifying the Peace of Westphalia 7.6.1 Proprietary Dynasticism versus Sovereignty 7.6.2 Restoration versus Modernity 7.6.3 Dynastic Collective Security System versus the Balance of Power 7.7 Conclusion: The End of 1648 8. Towards the Modem States-System: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism 8.1 Introduction: From 'Structural Discontinuity' to a 'Mixed-Case' Scenario 8.2 The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism in England 8.3 The Glorious Revolution and Modern Sovereignty 8.4 British Uniqueness: Capitalism, Modern Sovereignty, and Active Balancing 8.5 Geopolitically Combined and Socially Uneven Development Conclusion: The Dialectic of International Relations

The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is widely interpreted as the foundation of modern international relations. Benno Teschke exposes this as a myth. In the process he provides a fresh re-interpretation of the making of modern international relations from the eighth to the eighteenth century.

Inspired by the groundbreaking historical work of Robert Brenner, Teschke argues that social property relations provide the key to unlocking the changing meaning of 'international' across the medieval, early modern, and modern periods. He traces how the long-term interaction of class conflict, economic development, and international rivalry effected the formation of the modern system of states. Yet instead of identifying a breakthrough to interstate modernity in the so-called 'long sixteenth century' or in the period of intensified geopolitical competition during the seventeenth century, Teschke shows that geopolitics remained governed by dynastic and absolutist political communities, rooted in feudal property regimes.

The Myth of 1648 argues that the onset of specifically modern international relations only began with the conjunction of the rise of capitalism and modern state-formation in England. Thereafter, the English model caused the restructuring of the old regimes of the Continent. This was a long-term process of socially uneven development, not completed until World War I.