Response to Barry Buzan and George Lawson The Global Transformation: The 19th Century

and the Making of Modern International Relations

Author(s): Christopher Chase-Dunn
Source: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3 (September 2013), pp. 635-636
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The International Studies Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24017930
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International Studies Quarterly (2013) 57, 635-636

Response to Barry Buzan and George Lawson

The Global Transformation: The 19th Century and the Making of
Modern International Relations

Christopher Chase-Dunn

Institute for Research on World-Systems, University of California-Riverside

Buzan and Lawson propose a wide critique thatBuzan

contends
and Lawton also mention the 19th-century
that important developments that occurred emergence
during theof international governmental institutions as
"long 19th century" (1789-1914) have been ignored orfeature of global order that has implications
an important
misconstrued by most other international relations theo
for comprehending what happened in the 20th century
rists. And they assert their own version of what
and was impor
for the future of global governance.
tant about the 19 th century as the period when They contend that true "rational" states only fully
fundamental features of the world-system emerged that emerged in 19th-century Europe, and this is meant to
are still central in the 21st century. explain the organizational advantage that the West devel
They are right that the 19th century was important oped over the East. They are referring to states as power
because for the first time, there was a nearly global singlecontainers with formal administrative capacities and
network of allying and fighting states organized around thestrong efforts to monopolize legitimate violence within
rise of the European great powers and the encirclement ofspecified borders.1 The centralization of control over
China, long the hegemonic great power of a largely sepa military force is mentioned in connection with the elimi
rate East Asian international system. Buzan and Lawsonnation of mercenaries and privateers. The issue of the
assert that the rise of the European Great powers was made emergence of nation-states that are primarily under the
possible by "a novel configuration which linked industrialicontrol of capital is not discussed, though this phenome
zation, the rational state, and ideologies of progress." non was certainly spreading in the 19th century and
Buzan and Lawson improve upon the more usual needs to be analyzed in order to understand the evolu
core-centric bias in international relations by focusingtion of the world-system.
attention on the important role played by the Global South Buzan and Lawson rightly stress the importance of the
in the reproduction and transformation of internationalemergence of a single global hierarchy in the 19th
orders. They note that it was during the 19th century that century, but they miss some important aspects of this.
huge economic inequalities between the European GreatNot only was there a 19th-century wave of globalization
Powers and Asia, Africa, and Latin America emerged. but there was a long period of deglobalization in the first
half of the 20th century (Chase-Dunn, Kawano and
Brewer 2000). It is important to recall that what goes up
Those with machine guns, medicine, industrial power,
usually eventually comes down. They correctly see waves
railroads, and new forms of organization gained a pro
nounced advantage over those with limited access to
of industrialization, but do not point out that interna
these sources of power. The resulting inequalities fos
tional economic integration is also cyclical.
tered the emergence of a hierarchical international Another important insight that they neglect is based
on close studies of the earlier East Asian international
order, the establishment of which defines the basic
commonality between the 19th century and the con system and the period of East/West integration i
19th and 20th centuries. Some of the institutional fea
temporary world (Buzan and Lawson 2013).
tures of the Chinese trade-tribute system that structu
They see the non-core Global South as both a fieldmuch of of the earlier East Asian international order
competition in which the core powers sought (seek)became to incorporated into the emerging global
best one another with regard to exploitation and domina reflected in certain aspects of US policy in East As
tion, but also as a locus of resistance to exploitation World
and War II (Arrighi, Hamashita and Selden 20
domination that affected (affects) the very nature of theAnd, though Buzan and Lawson mention how
global institutions. An example of this is the important industry and the "industrious revolution" was a pr
role played by the successful Haitian slave revolt in influ
to capital-intensive industrialization in Europe, the
encing the outcome of the struggle between Britainthe and important point made by Arrighi (2006) th
France for global domination in the world revolution economic
of modernity has tended toward a more
1789. The subsequent world revolutions of 1848 and
1917 also had powerful effects on the configurations and 1 Though they use the word "rational" to describe this phe
institutions of international order by influencing the out there is no explicit discussion of Weberian "rational-legal authority a
comes of struggles among contending elites. should have been an advantage in competition with other kinds of

Chase-Dunn, Christopher. (2013) Response to Barry Buzan and Ceorge Lawson. Intel-national Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu. 12093
© 2013 International Studies Association

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 636 The Global Transformation

Buzan and
intensive (industrious) form ofLawson stress the important qualitative
production that is s
what less prone to crisesupsweep
ofinunemployment
the scale of military technology during
thanthe is
Western liberal version in which workers are fired as soon 19th century, but they say nothing about the implications
as they can economically be replaced by technology. of these developments for the future of hegemonic
I should also mention that Buzan and Lawson's (2013) decline and imperial rivalry. And they do not mention
portrayal of Marxian understandings of global inequalithe phenomenon of "imperial over-reach" that seems to
ties repeats arguments about how the exploitation of occur when a hegemon experiences relative economic
wage labor works but leaves out the most important condecline while it continues to have great superiority in
tribution of the world-system Marxists—the idea that military power (Modelski 2005).
unequal exchange between the core and the non-core is They also fail to mention the important research by
far larger than would be accounted for by differences inModelski and Thompson (1996) on the centrality of new
labor productivity and that this is due to the maintenance lead industries in the rise of great powers. This was not a
of low-cost labor in the non-core by means of organizednew development in the 19th century because the earlier
coercion and institutional structures that undercut the Dutch economic leadership had also been based on new
efforts of peasants and workers in the non-core lead industries, but the particular details of the British
to obtain
higher incomes (colonialism and neo-colonial shift forms from ofconsumer goods to capital goods and then to
control) (Amin 1980). finance capital are germane for understanding both the
While Buzan and Lawson do acknowledge the contin similarities and differences between the British and US
uing existence of institutionalized power differences trajectories.
rather than asserting, as some globalization pundits have, Overall, the Buzan and Lawson discussion of the 19th
that the world is now "flat", their essay does not reflect century represents a huge improvement over most other
much awareness of the long tradition of analysis and tendencies in international relations theory and interna
research on how institutional structures have reproduced tional political economy that should inspire other schol
global inequalities. They also fail to mention the impor ars. We can look forward to an elaboration of their
tant developments that occurred in the 19th century with approach that focusses on a careful comparison
regard to the elaboration of techniques of "informal similarities and differences between the structural and
empire" by both Britain and the United States (Go 2011). ideological aspects of the 19th century with the con
Their emphasis on the importance of the dramatically porary world historical situation.
increased scale of global economic inequality in the 19th
century is important, but should not overshadow compar References
isons with earlier waves of European colonialism since
the Crusades. The expansion of capitalist slavery and Amin, Samir. (1980) The Class Structure of the Contemporary
serfdom in earlier centuries were as fundamental to the Imperialist System. Monthly Review 31 (8): 9-26.

evolution of the Europe-centered world-systemArrighi,

as theGiovanni. (2006) Adam Smith in Beijing. London: Verso.
Arrighi, Giovanni, Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Selden, Eds.
19th-century wave of colonization, decolonization, and
(2003) The Resurgence of Asia: 500, 150 and 50 year Perspectives.
neo-colonialism was to be (Chase-Dunn and Lerro 2013).
London: Routledge.
There are other important developments that emerged Chase-Dunn, C., and Bruce Lerro. (2013) Social Change: Globalizatio
in the long 19th century that are only lightly treated in from the Stone Age to the Present. Boulder: Paradigm.
the Buzan and Lawson essay. The most glaring is the Chase-Dunn, C., Yukio Kawano, and Benjamin Brewer. (2000) Trade
extent to which the industrial revolution and ideologies Globalization Since 1795: Waves of Integration in the World
of progress and equality that led to the abolition of slav System. American Sociological Review 65 (1): 77-95.
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