Despite ubiquitous references to ‘ethnicity’ in both academic and public discourse, the history and politics of this concept remain largely unexplored. By constructing the first transnational and interlingual conceptual history of ethnicity, this book unearths the pivotal role that this concept played in the making of the international order. After critiquing existing accounts of the ‘expansion’ or ‘globalisation’ of international society, the chapter proposes to rethink the birth of the international order through a scrutiny of its major concepts. Fusing Reinhart Koselleck’s method of conceptual history with the philosophical writings of G. W. F. Hegel and Jacques Derrida, the chapter theorises the emergence of the international order as a dialectical process that both negated and preserved existing imperial hierarchies. The concept of ethnicity is ejected by this dialectical process as a residual category – an indigestible kernel of difference and particularity – that cannot be internalised by the work of sublation.

Chapter 4 starts with a discussion of imperialism constructed as a fact and as theory. It highlights the major disruptions in East Asian and world history. The prevailing realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist theories are not scaled to explain such dramatic transformations of East Asia by Western imperialism. Rather, a historical sociological approach anchored on evolutionary theory is a better fit. Western domination based on the rise of the West in terms of economic, technological, and military power took several centuries to complete. Some East Asian empires were also expanding after 1500. A turning point was Britain’s defeat of China in the Opium War of 1839–1842. After that, East Asian nations engaged earnestly in reform. Some, like Japan, succeeded, while others, like China, failed, resulting in a great divergence among Asian countries. To some extent, much of East Asia still lives in the shadow of that imperialist past.

This chapter examines Kenya's use of debt-based financial statecraft, revealing an uneven track record. It first describes how the Kenyan government diversified its portfolio of external finance with both international bonds and Chinese loans. Drawing on interviews with government and donor officials, the chapter then shows Kenya's mixed success in extracting bargaining leverage from its new sources of finance. While the Kenyan government achieved increased flexibility from donors on governance issues, it encountered greater resistance on financial management practices. The chapter highlights that donors' strategic interests in their relationship with Kenya encouraged them to be more flexible when Kenya diversified its portfolio of external finance, but that their concerns about accountability and use of funds led them to be more stringent on issues of financial management.

This chapter ties together the narratives presented in the book’s three substantive chapters to provide an overview of the conceptual history of ethnicity. The chapter then unpacks the ideological functions performed by this concept in service of the international order, and recaps how the emergence of ethnicity contributed to both the negation and preservation of imperial hierarchies. Drawing inspiration from Carl Schmitt’s discussion of ‘nomos’, the chapter concludes by proposing a speculative notion of ‘ethnos’ as the foundational ordering of beings.

Chapter 1 introduces evolution theory and evolutionary explanation for studies of East Asian international relations and lays out the design of the whole book

Chapter 5 tackles the question of the applicability of belligerent reprisals in non-international armed conflict. After assessing the merits and difficulties associated with previous reflections on the topic, it devises a new methodology to approach the issue. Then, it puts the notion of belligerent reprisals in relation with the two features of inequality of status between States and non-State armed groups, and equality of rights and obligations for parties to non-international armed conflicts. A careful reading of the travaux préparatoires of Additional Protocol II to the 1949 Geneva Conventions upholds an interpretation that links belligerent reprisals with the latter principle, and that places reciprocity at the basis of both the applicability and the purpose of the measure in non-international armed conflicts. The chapter concludes with the impact of this formalization on such key questions as the requirement of imputability to a State of the original IHL violation and the actual features of the principle of equality. It suggests that the focus be shifted to the idea of equilibrium of rights and obligations, and that belligerent reprisals be seen as a key enabler of it.

This chapter empirically analyzes how portfolios of external finance impact aid agreements. The chapter integrates data on external debt and foreign aid to establish a comprehensive picture of developing countries' portfolios of external finance, demonstrating that these have become less reliant on traditional donors over time. The analysis tests if a greater share of finance from Chinese or private sources is associated with favorable terms from traditional donors, using measures of aid volume, infrastructure project share, and conditions attached to World Bank projects. The findings indicate that as countries draw a greater share of their external finance from nontraditional sources, they are more likely to receive aid on preferred terms. The relationship is stronger for countries of strategic significance to donors and, especially, those with higher donor trust.

Chapter 3 focuses on the figure of the jihadist in the context of the Syrian Civil War. Outlawed as a terrorist by the Security Council and perceived as a security threat in home states, this latest version of the enemy of humanity seems to have nothing in common with previous foreign fighters. The aim of the chapter is to re-inscribe this actor within the longer history of foreign volunteering. It shifts from domestic debates to national courtrooms, showing how the jihadist combatant gets constantly split in two: idealist and fanatic, hero and villain, martyr and freedom fighter. Based on previous images of the foreign fighter, these dichotomies highlight different conceptions of freedom and hence problematize its current conflation with terrorism. The chapter ends with a digression on the laws of war, revealing the persisting cultural bias used against certain foreign combatants through the domestic application of IHL.

This chapter explores how the conceptual shift from ‘tribes’ to ‘ethnic groups’ contributed to the dismantling of the standard of civilisation. Whereas the binary distinction between civilised nations and primitive tribes reinforced the imperial hierarchy between European and non-European peoples, the concept of ethnicity is characterised by a cultural relativism that acknowledges the formal equality of all peoples. The chapter also shows how these conceptual changes enabled the reimagining of the international order as an ‘anarchical’ system populated by sovereign nation-states: at the very moment that anthropologists were moving away from colonial notions of ‘primitive society’ and ‘ordered anarchy’, IR theorists were adopting this vocabulary to conceptualise their own object. In this way, IR effectively accumulated the functions of colonial anthropology as the scientific vehicle for the study of the modern state’s primitive ‘other’. The chapter wraps up with a discussion of indigenous rights and their relationship to minority rights.

It must be remembered, too, that the belief in spirits and ghosts, and the return of the dead is far from having disappeared among educated people, and that many who are sensible in other respects find it possible to combine spiritualism with reason. A man who has grown rational and sceptical, even, may be ashamed to discover how easily he may for a moment return to a belief in spirits under the combined impact of strong emotion and perplexity.

Chapter 3 highlights several instances of State practice where the reciprocity paradigm continues to influence belligerent reprisals. Its bearing emerges from those formalizations of the mechanism that stress the purpose of restoring the balance in rights and obligations unduly disturbed by a breach of the laws of armed conflict. The chapter will first retrace this interest in several positions expressed by States before, during, and in the aftermath of the Geneva Diplomatic Conference that led to the adoption of the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. It will then focus on the provisions of military manuals, with a particular focus on US practice and the latest Department of Defense Law of War Manual. Finally, it will provide an extensive and, under many respects, unprecedented analysis of the Italian case-law on World War II atrocities: this judicial practice, which has been revived only recently, has brought to the fore several elements that are strongly associated with reciprocity. The chapter will thus highlight notable examples in which the reciprocity paradigm contributes to defining the purpose and function of belligerent reprisals.