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This article explores how International Relations (IR) might better conceptualise and analyse an underexplored but constitutive relationship between race and sovereignty. I begin with a critical analysis of the 'orthodox account' of sovereignty which, I argue, produces an analytical and historical separation of race and sovereignty by: (1) abstracting from histories of colonial dispossession; (2) treating racism as a resolved issue in IR. Against the orthodox account, I develop the idea of 'racial sovereignty' as a mode of analysis which can: (1) overcome the historical abstractions in the orthodox account; (2) disclose the ongoing significance of racism in international politics. I make this argument in three moves. Firstly, I present a history of the 17th century struggle between 'settlers' and 'natives' over the colonisation of Virginia. This history, I argue, discloses the centrality of dispossession and racialisation in the attendant attempts of English settlers to establish sovereignty in the Americas. Secondly, by engaging with criticisms of 'recognition' found in the anticolonial tradition, I argue that the Virginian experience is not simply of historical interest or localised importance but helps us better understand racism as ongoing and structural. I then demonstrate how contemporary assertions of sovereignty in the context of Brexit disclose a set of otherwise concealed colonial and racialised relations. I conclude with the claim that interrogations of racial sovereignty are not solely of historical interest but are of political significance for our understanding of the world today.

The history of capitalism's origins is unmistakably Eurocentric, placing sixteenth-century developments in politics, economy, culture, and ideology squarely within the unique context of Europe. And while the disciplinary remit of International Relations (IR) should offer a way out of such European provincialism, it too has been built on largely Eurocentric assumptions. In Eurocentric approaches, the Ottoman Empire has been absent, passive, or merely a comparative foil against which the specificity and superiority of Europe has been defined. And yet, the Ottoman Empire was arguably the most powerful actor in the Early Modern period. In this article, I argue that any history of capitalism's origins must therefore account for the historical importance of the Ottomans. In doing so, this article seeks to address the non-European blind-spot, both in theorisations of capitalism's origins and in IR theory, by reincorporating the material significance of the Ottoman Empire in historical processes, which led to the transition to capitalism. I do so by utilising the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, and in the process seek to defend its credentials as a non-Eurocentric social theory on the one hand and as a sociologically and historically sensitive theory of international relations on the other. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe history of capitalism's origins is unmistakably Eurocentric, placing sixteenth-century developments in politics, economy, culture, and ideology squarely within the unique context of Europe. And while the disciplinary remit of International Relations (IR) should offer a way out of such European provincialism, it too has been built on largely Eurocentric assumptions. In Eurocentric approaches, the Ottoman Empire has been absent, passive, or merely a comparative foil against which the specificity and superiority of Europe has been defined. And yet, the Ottoman Empire was arguably the most powerful actor in the Early Modern period. In this article, I argue that any history of capitalism's origins must therefore account for the historical importance of the Ottomans. In doing so, this article seeks to address the non-European blind-spot, both in theorisations of capitalism's origins and in IR theory, by reincorporating the material significance of the Ottoman Empire in historical processes, which led to the transition to capitalism. I do so by utilising the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, and in the process seek to defend its credentials as a non-Eurocentric social theory on the one hand and as a sociologically and historically sensitive theory of international relations on the other.

This article draws on the theory of uneven and combined development (U&CD) to construct a non-Eurocentric and 'internationalist' analysis of the transition to capitalism. In doing so, we seek to respond to and rethink two challenges: exposures of Eurocentric notions of the 'Rise of the West' on the one hand; and recent critiques of Eurocentric assumptions in the theory of U&CD on the other. Beginning with an assessment of Robert Brenner's Anglo-centric theorisation of capitalism's origins, we argue Brenner's efforts are hamstrung by an omission of international determinations and conditions. In turn, we retrace these missing international factors through an analysis of the Mongol invasions of the 13th/14th centuries, Ottoman imperial expansion in the 15th/16th centuries and the contemporaneous discovery and colonisation of the New World. We argue that each case demonstrates the historically specific forms of U&CD that fed into – and ultimately determined – the developmental trajectory of capitalism in north-western Europe.

This Symposium on 'Teaching IR Globally' engages with and contributes to the current debate on non-Western and alternative analyses and the question of the inevitability of perspectivity in the field of IR and the study of global politics. This Symposium is unique in that it specifically addresses not how to undertake effective research on or in global IR, but rather how to teach IR globally to students at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In this group of contributions, Meera Sabaratnam and Kerem Nişancıoğlu present a syllabus that challenges final-year undergraduate students to link the racial history of International Relations, the wave of political decolonizations in Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, and current decolonisation struggles in theory and practice. In a presentation of a core course for an international Master's Degree, Martin Weber shows how to work with and against the '-isms' that usually organize the field of IR by staging thematic juxtapositions of familiar classics with texts usually relegated to the catch-all category 'other approaches.'

This Symposium on 'Teaching IR Globally' engages with and contributes to the current debate on non-Western and alternative analyses and the question of the inevitability of perspectivity in the field of IR and the study of global politics. This Symposium is unique in that it specifically addresses not how to undertake effective research on or in global IR, but rather how to teach IR globally to students at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. In this group of contributions, Meera Sabaratnam and Kerem Nişancıoğlu present a syllabus that challenges final-year undergraduate students to link the racial history of International Relations, the wave of political decolonizations in Asia and Africa in the twentieth century, and current decolonisation struggles in theory and practice. In a presentation of a core course for an international Master's Degree, Martin Weber shows how to work with and against the '-isms' that usually organize the field of IR by staging thematic juxtapositions of familiar classics with texts usually relegated to the catch-all category 'other approaches.'