A HISTORY OF GLOBAL POLITICS:CREATING AN INTERNATIONAL ORDER

1. Prepared by: Villena, Mangampo, Olarte, Garing (BSMA-1202)

2. 1. There are countries or states that are independent
and govern themselves.
2. Countries interact with each other through
diplomacy.
3. There are international organizations, like the
United Nations (UN), that facilitate interactions.
4. Beyond simply facilitating meetings between
states, international organizations also take on
lives of their own.

3. • “Country” is what academics also called the nation-
state.
The nation-state is a relatively modern phenomenon in
human history and people did not always organize
themselves as countries.
At different parts of humanity, people in various regions
of the world have identified exclusively with units as small
as their village or their tribe, and at other times, they see
themselves as members of larger political categories like
“Christendom” (the entire Christian World).

4. • Not all states are nations
• Nat all nations are states.
 There are states with multiple nations and
there are also single nations with multiple
states.

5. • In layman’s terms, state refers to a country and its
government.
• A state has four attributes:
1. It exercises authority over a specific population called its
citizens.
2. It governs a specific territory.
3. A state has a structure of government that crafts various
rules that people (society) follow.
4. The state has sovereignty over its territory.
Sovereignty refers to internal and external authority.

6. • According to Benedict Anderson, nation is an ‘imagined
community’.
• It is limited because it does not go beyond a given “official
boundary” and concern of the citizens of that nation.
Nation and state are closely related because it is
nationalism that facilitates state formation. In the modern
and contemporary era, it has been the nationalist
movements that have allowed for the creation of nation-
states. States become independent and sovereign because
of nationalist sentiment that clamors for this independence.

7. • The origins of the present-day concept of sovereignty can be traced
back to the Treaty of Westphalia, which was a set of agreements
signed in 1648 to end the Thirty Years’ War between the major
continental powers of Europe.
• The Westphalian system provided stability for the nations of
Europe , until it faced its first major challenge by Napoleon
Bonaparte. Bonaparte believed in spreading the principles of the
French Revolution- liberty, equality, and fraternity- to the rest
of Europe and thus challenged the power of kings, nobility and
religion in Europe. The Napoleonic War lasted from 1803-1815.
• In every country they conquered, the French implemented the
Napoleonic Code that forbade birth privileges, encouraged
freedom or religion and promoted meritocracy in government
service.

8. • Anglo and Prussian armies finally defeated Napoleon in the Battle
of Waterloo in 1815, ending the latters mission to spread his
liberal code across Europe.
• The Concert of Europe was an alliance of “great powers”- the UK,
Austria, Russia, and Prussia- that sought to restore the world of
monarchical, hereditary, and religious privileges of the time before
the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. It was an alliance
as well that sought to restore the sovereignty of the states.
• Under the Metternich system (named after the Austrian diplomat,
Klemens von Metternich, who was system’s main architect), the
Concert’s power and authority lasted from 1815 to 1914, at the
dawn of World War I.

9. • The desire for greater cooperation and unity among
states and people.
• Internationalism comes in different forms, but the
principle may be divided into broad categories:
1. Liberal Internationalism
2. Socialist Internationalism

10. Liberal Internationalism
• The first major thinker of liberal internationalism was the late 18th
century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant likened states
in a global system to people living in a given territory. States like
citizens of countries, must give up some freedom and establish a
continuously growing state consisting of various nations which
will include the nations of the world. In short, Kant imagined a
form of global government.
• Writing in the late 18th century as well, British philosopher Jeremy
Bentham( who coined the word “International” in 1780),
advocated the creation of “international law” that would govern the
inter-state relations. Bentham believed that objective global
legislators should aim to propose legislation that would create “
the greatest happiness of all nations taken together.”
• The first thinker to reconcile nationalism with liberal
internationalism was the 19th century Italian patriot Giuseppe
Mazzini. Mazzini was both an advocate of the unification of the
various Italian-speaking mini-states and a major critic of the
Metternich system.

11. • Mazzini influenced the thinking of US president
(1913-1921) Woodrow Wilson, who became one
of the 20th century’s most prominent
internationalist and because of his faith in
nationalism, he forwarded the;
Principle of self-determination- the belief that
the world’s nations had a right to a free, and
sovereign government.
• At the end of World War 1 in 1918, he pushed to
transform the League into a venue for
conciliation and arbitration to prevent another
war. Wilson, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1919.

12. It was practically helpless to prevent the onset and
intensification of World War II. On one side of the war
were the Axis Powers- Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s
Italy and Hirohito’s Japan- who were ultra-nationalists
that had an instinctive disdain for internationalism and
preferred to violently impose their dominance over other
nations. It was midst of this war between the Axis
Power and Allied Powers (composed of US, UK, France,
Holland and Belgium) that internationalism would be
eclipsed.
The League gave birth to some of the more task-specific
international organizations like World Health
Organization (WHO) and International Labour
Organization (ILO).
Despite its organizational dissolution, the League of
Nations’ principles survived World War II.

13.  Marx divided the world into classes;
1. Capitalist class- referred to the owners of factories, companies,
and other “means of production”.
2. Proletariat class- included those who did not own the means of
production, but instead, worked for the capitalists.
• Marx and his co-author, Friedrich Engels, believed that in a
socialist revolution seeking to overthrow the state and alter the
economy, the proletariat “had no nation”.
• Marx died in 1883.
 The Socialist International (SI) was a union of European socialist
and labor parties established in Paris in 1889. SI’s achievements
included the declaration of May 1 as Labor day and International
Women’s day and most importantly an 8 hour workday campaign.

14. The SI collapsed during the World War 1 as the
member parties refused or were unable to join the
internationalist efforts to fight for the war.
As the SI collapsed, a more radical version emerged.
In the so-called Russian Revolution of 1917, Czar
Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced by a
revolutionary government led by the Bolshevik
Party and its leader, Vladimir Lenin.This new state
was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic or
USSR.

15. • Comintern was established by Vladimir Lenin, a
Russian revolutionary, in order to spread socialist
revolutions across the world.
• The Comintern served as the central body for
directing communist parties all over the world.
• Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, dissolved the
Comintern in 1943.

16. • After the war, Stalin re-establish Comintern as the
Communist Information Bureau (Cominform).
The Soviet Union took over the countries in Eastern
Europe when the United States, Soviet Union and Great
Britain divided the war-torn Europe into their respective
spheres of influence. The Cominform like the Comintern
before it, helped direct the various communist parties that
had taken power in Eastern Europe. With the eventual
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991,whatever existing
thoughts about communist internationalism also
practically disappeared.

17. Thank you for
Listening =)