dissolution of all the absolutes in which the hitherto ascendant present

had strangled the future.51

I will return to some of these fault-lines in the distinction between the
family of civilized nations and the rest of the world in chapter 5. For now,
though, the main point that I want to highlight is that the persistence of
Grotian ideas about the divisibility of sovereignty and the rights of individuals
was closely bound up with the concept of civilization, which was such
a prominent feature of nineteenth-century international legal and political
thought. It would be quite wrong to conclude that the extra-European
order, with its institutions of federal government and paramountcy, was
originally designed with this goal in mind; as I explained in chapter 3,
the development of colonial and imperial systems was most heavily influenced
by the trading interests of European states and corporations.
But just as the European states-system eventually came to be viewed in
terms of the principle of toleration and national self-determination, so
the extra-European systems were gradually re-conceived in terms of the
increasingly popular ideas of civilization and white racial supremacy. To
have an adequate conception of order in modern world politics, we have
to go beyond the orthodox theory of toleration, reciprocal recognition
and territorial sovereignty in the European states-system, and we need
to appreciate the importance of the idea of civilization not merely as a
standard for regulating the entry of new states in international society,
but also for validating an entirely different set of legal rules and political
institutions in its own right.
An overview of order in modern world politics
I have concentrated on the concept of civilization and its importance to
modern international politics and international law because students of
international relations will already be familiar with the structure of the
international order that developed in the context of the European statessystem.
As implied by one of its foundational principles, cuius regio eius
religio, its ultimate purpose was to promote toleration in a world of different
religions, nations, cultures and political systems. It therefore operated
in accordance with the normative principle that each member of international
society should respect the sovereign independence of other states
in their domestic jurisdictions, whether defined in territorial or national
terms. To describe the emergence of this pattern of international political
and legal order, orthodox theorists concentrate on the rise of dynastic
monarchs, and the developing logic of their relations with one another.
Kidd, Principles of Western Civilization, p. 349. Compare with the later functionalist
theories developed in the interwar period by, inter alios, David Mitrany.
51