This chapter examines how the double historical experience with imperialism is incorporated into the collective memory of Ottoman and Post-Ottoman societies and to what end. While collective memory – sociocultural narratives and practices of collectively remembering (and forgetting) specific aspects of the past – and its cultivation reflects to the past it is a product of the respecting present. Using the example of the Battle of Kosovo and the Status of Jerusalem and focussing on the linkages between memory cultures and national identities this chapter highlights how different actors at different points in time have made use of the Ottoman past to shape the Post-Ottoman present according to their respective agenda.

This chapter argues against mainstream IR, which tend to only identify deficit of governance in ‘areas of limited statehood’. It presents the results of a structured comparison between Uganda and Cameroon. Taking the historicity of state seriously, the authors argue, brings to the fore that what is usually considered to be recent crisis, has it long roots in the past of how states have been formed. The four features that are highlighted are as follows. First, both Uganda and Cameroon are highly internationalized structures of domination. Second, both polities present a bifurcation inherited form the colonial regime between ‘citizens’ from ‘subjects’ (Mamdani). Third, both states make intensive use of the strategy of ‘discharge – i.e.the delegation of functions to private or semi-private agencies without giving up final control of them’ (Hibou). Fourth ‘power without knowledge’ (Breckenridge) is a central feature of state politics. The chapter ultimately argues against conventional narratives on modern statehood that ignore such important historical imprints.

Attempts to re-write recent world history as a long series of struggles against European imperialism are inherently self-defeating, for the effect is exactly what it is purportedly trying to avoid. By making struggle against Europe the sine qua non of the past two hundred years of overall human experience, such an approach privileges Europe, and so is by definition Eurocentric. Furthermore, it would be wrong to assume that only European imperial pasts are present in the contemporary international system. Other imperial systems have also left their marks on historical polities that are kept up by today’s polities. In this chapter, we discuss ho what we have elsewhere baptised the steppe tradition is still alive in parts of Central Asia. It has also left a solid legacy in Turkey, as well as remnants in Russia. The difference between these polities and European ones are often observed. The debt they owe to the Eurasian imperial steppe tradition takes us one step closer to accounting for these differences.

The notion of a ‘Third World’ rose to prominence in international political discourse around 1960 and vanished around 1990. I argue in this article that the term needs to be situated in a larger history of the perception of global difference. I take the ‘Third World’ to be an effect of theory. That is not to play down the material weight of inequality between rich and poor parts of humanity. The point is rather to highlight the importance of discourse in historical change. To what extent were colonial and imperial formations functional for the emergence of the said notion? The peculiar career of the concept is connected to the history of economic thought. The paper thus focuses on the emergence of the term around 1960 and investigates the irrelevance of economics in late colonialism as opposed to the prominence of economic experts in the post-1945 world order.

If the arguments in favour of historicism are so compelling, why does historicism have such relative difficulty in gaining a strong foothold, even after decades of the historical turn? This conclusion chapter focuses the structural constraints historicism faces in IR in particular and the social sciences in general. It first discusses why IR’s particular American origins as a discipline (as well the continued domination of US standards in the evaluation of IR scholarship globally) makes it difficult for historicist calls such as the one advanced by this volume to resonate in the wider discipline. It also argues, however, that the problem will not be solved automatically as American influence in the discipline and the world decreases. Approaches to IR hailing from other parts of the world have their own motivations to reject historicism even as they seem to care more about history than US based approaches. Historicism needs to be realistic about the obstacles it faces.

Before developing the argument of the book, this chapter gives an overview of the contexts where combat drones have been deployed as a basis for the study. The description of the contexts in which drone operations have been conducted extraterritorially against non-state actors by the US, the UK, and France follow a chronological sequence, and draw some general common and diverging features of the different legal rationales crafted by these states.

The so-called ‘civil police’ which originated in London and then spread to the US and the rest of the world has been a crucial institution for maintaining the international order. This is because the civil police, unlike the army, is a coercive regime meant for ‘citizens’ rather than ‘foreigners’ or ‘subjects’. The civil police regulates ‘domestic’ space, while the military is oriented to ‘foreign’ or ‘international’ space. This essay examines the origins of this important institution in the United Kingdom and the United States and reveals its colonial genealogy. The first civil police, the London Metropolitan Police, founded in the nineteenth century, was modelled after a colonial counter-insurgency force, the Irish Constabulary. In the United States, the civil police was initially modelled after the London police but later, in the early twentieth century, appropriated a series of techniques and tactics from America’s colonial regime in the Philippines. The strategic operation of both civil police institutions has been to draw upon the colonial site while covering up its colonial counter-insurgency and militaristic origins.

Hybrid warfare is a widely interpreted and highly contested concept and also a label for opponents and targets in conflict or competition in international relations. It is often projected as being something underhand undertaken by the other, however, this chapter examines the conceptual and operational history of Western hybrid warfare. This refers to creating suitable environmental conditions in the information and cognitive domain as a means to subvert a target government and bring about regime change.

The technological evolution currently being experienced globally, comes with a tremendous number of different advanatages. However, there are also new threats and vulnerabilities that are being exposed that can adversely affect national security. This is evident in the social media environment. Therefore, the current research needs to focus on understanding the balance between pros and cons in a pragmatic way to understand the actual and potential impacts (physical and psychological) on society.

Chapter three concerns the role and influence of politics and other intangible elements in modern warfare. This is taken from a historical perspective with the philosophy of great military strategy thinkers such as Sun Tzu, Niccolo Macchiavelli and Carl von Clausewitz, and the influence of their ideas on the contemporary information war battlefield that runs parallel to physical wars.

The relationship between imperialism and international organizations is a close one. This chapter charts three stages in this relationship since the early nineteenth century: first, the use of international organizations as a means of coordinating imperialism and containing or, preferably, preventing inter-imperial conflict; second, the global expansion of international organizations as a means of stratifying polities initially via a ‘standard of civilization’ and, later, through quotients of ‘modernization’; and third, the use of international organizations as a means for various forms of interventionism. Taken together, these three stages mark a shift from a limited realm of international organization to a virtually universal condition of international administration. Over the past two centuries, the rationale and competences of international organizations have been reconfigured, rearticulated and redistributed. This narrative demonstrates that international organizations in particular, and forms of international administration in general, owe core aspects of their origins, development and legacies to imperialism.

The reason and motivation behind researching and writing the book is presented, along with a description of the individual chapter content. A series of research questions are posed, with the intended purpose and role of bringing together the diverse content and analysis that is presented across the chapters.