Chapter 5 describes how anti-imperialists of various stripes successfully raised clams to self-determination during the second half of the twentieth century, and how this issued in the final globalization of the international system and the universalization of the nation state as the only prima facie legitimate form of rule to the exclusion of other forms of political association. Even if this spelled the end of formal imperial relations between the West and the rest of the world, critics were quick to point out how informal hierarchical relations were reproduced and further entrenched under conditions of sovereign equality. By amalgamating these seemingly incompatible forms of political association while marginalizing alternative forms in the process, a global international system was naturalized into brute fact of modern political life, with myths of origin invented in its support. Hence, rather than spelling the end of empire, it is possible to interpret the globalized international system not only as a continuation of imperial relations but as an empire in its own right.