The chapter draws together the main conclusions from the study. It highlights the implications of this study for how history is analysed and periodised, and how the approach taken in this book offers opportunities to create common ground amongst those interested in ’big picture’ approaches to the study of humankind in Intnernational Relations, Global Historical Sociology, and Global/World History. The chapter also looks at the implications for the English School of extending its analytical scheme in this way.

The chapter sets out the ’big picture’ approach of the book; its concepts, terms and definitions, and the aims and structure of the book.

Emanuel Adler’s 1997 article ‘Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’ is the most highly cited effort to position constructivism on a terrain between the dominant mainstream theories of neorealism and neoliberalism and their critical theoretic challengers. More than this, it is a constellation point for ideas Adler had advanced in earlier writings, and that he would develop to great effect over the coming two decades, most notably in his magnum opus, A Social Theory of Cognitive Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). This chapter explores the difficulties of holding the middle ground through a reading of Emanuel’s writings over the past three decades. I draw a distinction between two different approaches to seizing the middle ground, which I term, for want of better words, singular and dualist. The former, as part one details, is found in Martin Wight’s tripartite distinction between realism, rationalism, and revolutionism. This distinction is noteworthy because it is at once a typology of different ontological positions, arraying theories with very different assumptions about the nature of the political universe, and a classification of different views of the potential for normative change, or progress. The second, dualist approach separates questions of ontology from those of progress, imagining two middle grounds. Exemplified in Alder’s work, the first middle ground is between the ideal and the material and the individual and structural. But when Adler discusses progress, which is a prominent and enduring theme in his work, he introduces a second, less remarked upon, middle ground. In his early work he called this position ‘humanist realism’, locating it between stasis, on the one hand, and utopianism, on the other. The difficulties of holding the middle ground in singular approaches is apparent in Hedley Bull’s constant back and forth over the relative priority of the values of order and justice, a relationship central to rationalism’s location between realism and revolutionism. The difficulties of the dualist approach are evident in Emanuel’s shifting reconciliations between his two middle grounds. In his early work, reconciliation was to come through a condominium between constructivism and communitarian normative theory. In his most recent work, it comes through the concept of practice. Neither of these reconciliations are entirely satisfactory, however, and I conclude by suggesting three possible ways of better combining the ontological and the normative.

The first chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book. It discusses the theoretical context in International Relations within which the study of long-term normative change is situated. It introduces the English School as the main theoretical perspective with which the rise of environmental stewardship as a fundamental norm of global international society will be analysed. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of the main argument and an overview of the structure of the analysis.

The first part of Chapter 3 introduces the diverse roots of environmental thinking and identifies the normative core around which modern environmentalism is built. It traces the evolution of different strands of environmentalism and outlines the main debates that have shaped the evolution of environmental thinking and activism since the nineteenth century. The second part of this chapter identifies the different ways in which environmental ideas can be applied to the international realm. Employing the English School’s conceptual dyads of pluralism/solidarism and international/world society, it identifies four ideal types of how a green global order can be created: ‘Green Westphalia’ and ‘global environmental governance’, representing the pluralist and solidarist variants of a green international society; and ‘eco-localism’ and ‘eco-globalism’ as the pluralist and solidarist versions of a green world society.

Chapter 11 summarises the main argument developed in the book, with regard to the rise of global environmental stewardship as a primary institution of global international society, the norm transfer from world society to international society, the globalisation of the environmental norm, ongoing norm contestation and consolidation. It discusses the interplay between the environmental norm and other primary institutions of international society: diplomacy, international law, sovereignty, territoriality, great power management, market and developmentalism. Further, it discusses the use of English School theory to derive predictions about the future development of the international normative structure in response to major ecological threats.

Chapter 2 provides the main theoretical and conceptual framework for the analysis in this book. The first section introduces the conceptual landscape of the English School, especially the concepts of primary institutions, the solidarism versus pluralism debate, and the link between international society and world society.The second section reviews how various English School authors have interpreted the rise of global environmental politics, moving from an initial neglect of environmental issues among the founders of the English School to a more comprehensive engagement with global environmentalism in recent years. Building on this, the third section outlines the analytical framework that will inform the empirical analysis in the remainder of the book.

The emergence of global environmental responsibility as a fundamental norm, or primary institution, in International Relations represents a dramatic expansion of the normative horizon of international society. The successful norm transfer from world society to international society was made possible by a transnational alliance of environmentalists and scientists, as well as representatives of states and international organisations, which acted as norm entrepreneurs to inject environmental ideas into the international agenda. In the end, its successful establishment in international society depended on it being championed by powerful states, which exported domestic environmental norms to the international level. As such, the greening of international relations represents a complex process of political enmeshment between international and world society, but it has done relatively little to slow down global environmental degradation. The norm of global environmental stewardship is still honoured more in the breach than in the observance.

This chapter defines international societies as a set of polities that share foundational collective beliefs—a collective imagination regarding the nature and purposes of political and social organization. It discusses two challenges to ahistorical, positivist social science and international relations scholarship. Constructivist theory has convincingly demonstrated how international systems are social systems and that ideas and interests are inextricably linked. Similarly, the English School has championed the need for historical analyses and contextual nuance. This chapter acknowledges the affinity as well as differences between these approaches and my analysis. Furthermore, it articulates a methodology to conduct contextual, interpretative, and empirical analysis. Such an analysis demonstrates that political communities and international order do not depend solely or even primarily on material capabilities. In order to understand how political communities and order are constituted, one must acknowledge the importance of the ceremonial and the symbolic.

This introductory chapter presents the Valladolid junta in imperial Spain (1550-1551) as an alternative starting point for the history of international legal thought instead of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. Unlike Westphalia’s myth of equal states recognizing independence from the emperor and papacy within Europe, the Valladolid debate addressed the controversial question of legitimate infidel polities outside Europe. By focusing on native peoples on the colonial margins of transatlantic Christendom, the chapter reframes international relations from the periphery rather than strictly Europe. A more interesting story emerges, revealing that Christian-infidel relations and its discourse of infidel rights was an ambivalent predecessor to a modern international relations marked by recognition of independent sovereign states and colonial subjugation of less civilized ones. Accordingly, the chapter accomplishes two tasks: it reconsiders the Westphalian myth by examining the international politics of Thomas Hobbes attentive to his influential idea of the state of nature; it also treats significance of theology and the Church for affirming world order - the normative basis of international society - especially among sixteenth-century Spanish Dominicans associated with Valladolid critical of papal and imperial tyranny.