‘All scholars are Eurocentrics’: The limits of anti-Eurocentrism

What can be seen as a major problem with critics of Eurocentric IR is their tendency to overstate the impact of Eurocentrism as an ideology by confusing it with a more geo-historically situated form of Eurocentric world order. Stated differently, anti-Eurocentrics do not differentiate in general between Eurocentrism as an ideology (one that sees Europe, or a more global West as the only active subject of world politics) and Eurocentrism as a picture of the world that derives from the significance of European powers at a certain point in time, basically from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This perception leads the critics to exaggerate the extent of Eurocentrism in IR. Virtually all forms of analysis that give a prominent role to the European (and Western) actors in the global political order come to be seen as Eurocentric. Whenever a scholar chooses to focus on the significance of the European powers (or the impact of the West), he/she is targeted as Eurocentric.Footnote ³ The extent of this problem becomes more visible when considering the work of anti-Eurocentric scholarship, which demonstrates an unending circle of intra-IR disciplinary blaming and bashing.

For instance, feminist IR scholarship points to the prevalence of Eurocentric biases among their more mainstream colleagues.Footnote ⁴ In turn, they are accused by Hobson of Eurocentrism. He sees in feminist IRʼs focus on women in the Third World ʻthe risk of returning us back into the Eurocentric cul-de-sac of rendering Eastern women as but passive victims of Western power, thereby stripping them of agencyʼ.Footnote ⁵ Postcolonialists criticise in turn the approach most closely associated with Hobsonʼs approach, that is, historical sociology for carrying Eurocentric features.Footnote ⁶ Finally, postcolonialists are attacked by advocates of decolonising approaches who find the presence of Eurocentric positions in the work of the former.Footnote ⁷

This inherent race to the bottom in the form of accusing others as Eurocentrics demonstrates that a mere proliferation of anti-Eurocentric analyses will not suffice to de-Eurocentricise IR. Otherwise, disciplinary self-reflexivity will be reduced to blaming others for Eurocentrism without turning to a broader contextualisation of and variation between Eurocentrisms. It should be evident that this would help us neither in reducing the actual impact of ideologically motivated Eurocentric analyses in the discipline nor in gaining a better understanding of our own positions and scholarly motives. A major aspect in this context concerns the differences between the continuing impact of European/Western influences in todayʼs world and the way in which Western-dominated power-knowledge connections of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are to a certain extent overcome. Although many scholars criticise IRʼs Eurocentrism for the close relations they find between knowledge (production) practices and the supposed power impact of the West, they overlook the extent to which the gradual decline in the Westʼs power has also changed these interactions. This means that one has to approach Eurocentrism in a more nuanced fashion so that the residual impact of the Western powersʼ relatively decreasing global significance can be recognised as the instantiation of a gradual process of de-Eurocentricisation that goes in line with a less Western, more post-Western world.

Immanuel Wallerstein speaks of ʻanti-Eurocentric Eurocentrismʼ. According to him, this form of Eurocentric scholarship asserts either that Europe just interrupted others from doing what they were doing and did it herself, or that Europe did something which was just ʻa continuation of what others had already been doing for a long time, with the Europeans temporarily coming to the foregroundʼ. To overcome such anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism, scholars must ʻcease trying to deprive Europe of its specificity on the deluded premise that we are thereby depriving it of an illegitimate creditʼ. Wallerstein suggests that ʻ[w]e must fully acknowledge the particularity of Europeʼs reconstruction of the world because only then will it be possible to transcend it.’Footnote ⁸ Following this assumption, even Hobsonʼs anti-Eurocentrism emerges as an instance of Eurocentrism, for he tends to look for non-Western origins in virtually all historical developments of the modern era, overlooking thus the extent to which the Western dominance in the nineteenth century made its previous interactions with the non-Western actors less relevant when thinking of Eurocentrism in that era.Footnote ⁹I turn to a detailed examination of Hobsonʼs approach after providing a more differentiated typology between various forms of Eurocentrism.

As another example in which Wallerstein would have seen anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism, one can refer to Kerem Nişancıoğluʼs recent study on the peripheral role given to the Ottoman Empire in studies of capitalist development. He argues that IR ʻhas been built on largely Eurocentric assumptionsʼ with the Ottomans being ʻabsent, passive, or merely a comparative foil against which the specificity and superiority of Europe has been definedʼ.Footnote ¹⁰ His counterpoint is that the Ottoman Empire ʻwas arguably the most powerful actor in the Early Modern periodʼ. Based on his employment of Trotskyʼs theory of uneven and combined development, the combined impact of Ottoman strength and Europeʼs privilege of backwardness would lead the latter (especially its northwestern parts, that is, England) to gain ʻthe geopolitical space required to conduct modern state-buildingʼ. Thus, Nişancıoğlu presents a revision of the historical sociology of international relations, which he accuses of being too concentrated on European history. The point of contention is about conditions affecting the birth of modern capitalism. However, it is possible to see this as another issue, one that is researchable in a historical framework without accusations of Eurocentrism. Nişancıoğlu himself is careful to add that his goal is not ʻto argue that capitalismʼs origins were entirely extra-Europeanʼ nor to ʻseek to substantially diminish the centrality or uniqueness of Europe in this processʼ.Footnote ¹¹ These are big caveats that show that even self-declared non-Eurocentric accounts recognise Europeʼs specific role in the emergence of the modern world order. Hence, it becomes possible to reject Nişancıoğluʼs general critique of IRʼs Eurocentrism, for his own work illustrates that the broader assumptions of IR still hold with regard to Europeʼs dominant role in the emergence of modern capitalism and the international order associated with it.

Redefining Eurocentrism: Historical-contextual, ideological, residual

Based on the preceding examples, one can come up with the following question: Do we understand different things when discussing Eurocentric IR? I engage in this section with recent anti-Eurocentrist scholarship, showing how varying conceptual definitions of Eurocentrism coexist. Then I offer a tripartite typology that underlines how there is not a single Eurocentrism, but at least three different versions. This necessitates generating a revisionist anti-Eurocentric approach that takes these variations into account. Finally, I turn to twentieth-century texts by American and British IR scholars, exemplifying cases that represent different types of Eurocentrism.

For some, Eurocentrism is defined ʻas a set of practices – scientific, cultural, political – which overtly (mostly in the era of colonial imperialism) or tacitly (mostly in the postcolonial era) seek to establish and maintain the primacy of post-Enlightenment European political and epistemic culture at the expense of alternative political systems and epistemologiesʼ.Footnote ¹² It can be about ʻthe sensibility that Europe is historically, economically, culturally and politically distinctive in ways that significantly determine the overall character of world politicsʼ.Footnote ¹³ In another definition, Eurocentrism pertains to ʻa specific mode of comprehending modernity that begins and ends with Europeʼ. Todayʼs non-European societies are not thus accepted as active actors who could have a role in shaping the world in the present and the future.Footnote ¹⁴ For others, Eurocentrism is about ʻregard[ing] the weak and the powerless as marginal or derivative elements of world politics, as at best the site of liberal good intentions or at worst a potential source of threatsʼ. Only the powerful actors (of the West) are taken into direct consideration, with the discipline thus ʻ[f]ailing to study the weak and the strong together, as jointly responsible for making historyʼ.Footnote ¹⁵

Two English Schoolers, Barry Buzan and Richard Little, define Eurocentrism as ʻthe propensity to understand world history and international politics past and present as if they were merely offshots of European history and Westphalian forms of international relationsʼ.Footnote ¹⁶ They assert that IR studies have employed ʻa very Eurocentric perspective with a concomitant failure to come to terms with how non-European “others” understood international relations or organized their worldʼ.Footnote ¹⁷ The problem with this suggestion is that they overlook the dimension of power that was associated with the Europeans as a consequence of their world political dominance that marked the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on this, it becomes more difficult to expect scholars to theorise about world politics in a way that would disregard the position of Europe at that point in time. What nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars described and theorised was what they (more or less correctly) perceived to be a European-dominated international system. In this regard, Buzan and Littleʼs focus on how ʻothersʼ came to terms with or contributed to this international political order dominated by Europeans can be interpreted as a question that is not of primary importance for IR. Of course, trying to understand or explain the world political situation of the era by a mere reference to Europe cannot be sufficient by itself. However, it is important to remember that this period was the first time that the globe did not include anymore a separate world for the non-European others. Even the dynamics affecting the non-Westerners were analysed very carefully by the Europeans, and it was these processes of studying them that engendered IR in its initial forms which were marked by colonial and racist origins.Footnote ¹⁸ Therefore, the difference of the non-Western world was in fact taken into account by the first generations of IR scholars. The absence of non-Western IR did not mean that IR ignored the non-West, but the centrality of Europe in the world order made their starting assumptions Eurocentric too.

For some, ʻEurocentrism stubbornly survived European imperialismʼ. This means that ʻlegacies of a Eurocentric international order remain palpable, even though Europe is no longer at its centreʼ.Footnote ¹⁹ Such a statement carries a twofold significance. First, it helps to differentiate between a historically definable period of European-led world order and the importance of Europe in a post-European context. Second, it insists on the continuing relevance of Eurocentrism in a post-European era. Thinking of these two points together can help to distinguish between an ideological Eurocentrism which is not time-dependent, a Eurocentrism that is a direct result of its time and place, and a more complex version of Eurocentrism, residual Eurocentrism.

Based on these premises, I differentiate between three types of Eurocentrism in IR. The first, historical-contextual type appeared in the era of the European-dominated international order. It developed in parallel with the concomitant rise to global dominance of Europeʼs great powers in the nineteenth century. As the emergence of IR as a scholarly enterprise coincided with this period in time, it was natural for the new discipline to be shaped by Eurocentric assumptions. It was conjunctural, with a limited tempo-spatial existence that followed Europeʼs global dominance from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

A second type concerns the manner in which Eurocentrism became an ideology that could develop with or without an accompanying European dominance in international politics. This meant that in the twenty-first century, or even in the second half of the twentieth century, a world that has undergone a significant transformation would not suffice to lead some scholars to reach the shores of a less Eurocentric world. Many IR scholars would thus insist on a Eurocentric (and increasingly Western-centric) worldview, that is, on the ideational continuation of a world that did not exist anymore. Analyses pointing to the significance of decolonisation, the rise of non-Western powers, and the (gradual) emerge of a post-Western world did not modify their views.

The third type of Eurocentrism is more opaque, situated between the two preceding versions. Most importantly, it is not a consequence of the circumstances of its time, making it a largely anachronistic outgrowth. Neither presents it an ideology that is carried in a (more or less) self-conscious manner. What emerges is not a form of reaction, not even an insistence for a time gone by. Rather, one could interpret it in Kuhnian terms as a failed case of paradigm shift. Stated differently, this third Eurocentrism is about scholars who have failed, for various reasons, to recognise the need to update their individual perspectives. I call this residual Eurocentrism. It concerns scholars employing Eurocentric perspectives without being conscious of problems generated by their choice. There are multiple reasons for this failure. First, there is the issue of scholarly generations. Second, the problem of scholarsʼ lack of access to the most up-to-date IR literature can be reflected in the perspectives they develop. Third, focusing more on the observation of the earlier period of a European-dominated world leads some scholars to ignore world political changes. I turn to these aspects later, as it is this residual Eurocentrism that is the most prevalent one in todayʼs IR.

Meera Sabaratnam pointed earlier to ʻintellectual Eurocentrismʼ as ʻa hard habit to recognize and unpackʼ. Overcoming it means to try to overcome ʻthe tendency to see the world in terms defined by the ontological distinctiveness of the Westʼ. However, she underlines the importance of being careful not only with regard to ʻthe old crude versionsʼ but also about ʻthe new manifestations in which it quietly re-presents itselfʼ.Footnote ²⁰ Therefore, while Sabaratnamʼs observations provide significant nuances that are not always present in anti-Eurocentric scholarship, her framework kept the definition of a single continuing Eurocentrism that differs only superficially between its old and new versions. My tripartite distinction, on the other hand, aims to underline how there are multiple versions of Eurocentric biases in IR, and that there is a gradual decline of Eurocentrism in our discipline, not least thanks to the demise of its historical-contextual version.

When looking at Eurocentrism it becomes important to pay a particular attention to its twin concept of Western-centrism. Most often, these two are used interchangeably or in a way in which the latter includes Eurocentrism, even going beyond it.Footnote ²¹ The divergences that arose within Western IR in the twentieth century pointed that Eurocentrism at a time of declining European power could not always equal Western-centrism at the center of which stood the US superpower with its accompanying dominance in IR. Nonetheless, it is more convenient not to differentiate between these concepts, for in a world political constellation increasingly marked by the impact of non-Western powers the conceptual variations between Euro- and Western-centric IR perceptions have lost their mutual distinctions. At the same time, for the critics of Eurocentric IR, the lesser dominance of European powers proper is of secondary importance. The US-led West of the twentieth century is connected to its European ʻpastʼ due to the politico-cultural ties that determine the continuation of Eurocentrism in Western-centric ways. This merger allows us to use these labels interchangeably when analysing their position in the discipline.

Anti-Eurocentric scholars ignore the extent to which the three types of Eurocentrism play dissimilar roles. When these scholars point to studies that are in fact based on an outdated form of Eurocentrism (historical-contextual), and use it as their main tool for emphasising current difficulties faced by the discipline, it becomes a problem. When they ignore the divergence of residual Eurocentrism from Eurocentric biases that are ideologically guided, this weakens their case because the significance of the two is not the same. Most importantly, when not taking into account such variations, these critics can fail to emphasise more successfully the problematic nature of IRʼs continuing problems with Eurocentrism, as they do not provide a clear account of the actual extent of its impact. Concurrently, they ignore IRʼs capacity for a scientific aggiornamento (update) for they overlook the degree to which the discipline, the scholars, and the world keep changing.

At this juncture, it is important to point to different forms of Eurocentric IR in their historical setting. As the two most prominent scholarly communities, examples taken from American and British scholarship help us to situate Eurocentric IR in its temporal and spatial context of the twentieth century, showing the ways in which the three forms of Eurocentrism played their role.

William Fox, a leading mid-twentieth-century IR scholar, stated, with Annette Baker Fox, that ʻ[t]he body of social science out of which the study of international relations has sprung is also the common property of the Western scholarly community.’Footnote ²² They added that ʻthe student of international relations … must be able to transcend his own time and cultureʼ. However, this was not a call for a value-free science that would be detached from its Western position, for they asserted that the transcendence would help students in ʻunderstanding as to what aspects of our state system are inherent in any multiple-sovereignty system and what aspects are capable of transformation into a system which will more efficiently implement the values of our free Western societyʼ.Footnote ²³ Interestingly, Fox ignored their own call to overcome tempo-cultural boundaries, making visible the Western-centrism that pervaded their text. IR is not just interpreted as ʻthe common propertyʼ of Western scholars but also as a means of furthering Western values. Their statements present an instance of ideological Eurocentrism whose initial formation took place at a point in which the Western-centric world order was, to a certain extent, still dominant. Therefore, Foxʼ approach was informed by a historical-contextual Eurocentrism that would be later replaced by an ideological Eurocentrism extended to US-centrism (as noted earlier, I propose not to differentiate between these versions of Western-centrism, as this latter concept becomes a generic term covering both earlier Eurocentrism and later US-centrism).

In order to understand how three different types of Eurocentrism can follow each other, it is useful to turn to William Callahanʼs critique of the English School. While Richard Little claims that the establishing names of the English School ʻwere part of a generationʼFootnote ²⁴ with a positive image of the Empire, Callahan shows that their positions went beyond a mere appraisal of the British Empire, reaching a hierarchical understanding of the world, and basing the concept of international society on a Eurocentric image.Footnote ²⁵ Adam Watsonʼs praise for Western imperialism in China is made clear by reference to his approving remarks that the intervention in China by the Western powers in the early twentieth century was ʻa sustained and developing collective action on behalf of international society as a wholeʼ.Footnote ²⁶ Watsonʼs approach completely ignores Chinese perception(s), showing how historical-contextual Eurocentrism could turn to residual Eurocentrism, leading him to look back at history in a way that disregarded the changes that have taken place in the mean time. In Watsonʼs geo-historical epistemology (a concept I explain in more detail below) China was still a power that could not be given an independent capacity as an active agent, remaining thus in his perception as a passive object even in the twentieth century.

Callahan also refers to Michael Howardʼs steadfast defense of imperialist values. According to Howard ʻempires were won [mainly] by small groups of men exceptional in their energy, intelligence, endurance, and physical courageʼ.Footnote ²⁷ These observations come up as reflections of a scholarʼs worldview. This is an instance of ideological Eurocentrism. Changes in world political conditions do not challenge it, as these biases are already hardwired into a given scholarly analysis as ideological tools. This type explains how Eurocentrism could more adaptively survive in some scholarship. It is essential to differentiate between what one could call a surviving ideological Eurocentrism and a broader IR that intermittently shows instances of certain Eurocentric signs. The latter pertains to residual Eurocentrism. While scholars like Hobson do not see an end to Eurocentrism, but merely variations in its surface features, I claim that the weight of Eurocentric IR is decreasing both in the case of scholarsʼ worldviews and in the way world political analyses are undertaken. The impact of a post-Western world reaches nowadays the English School, with its new generation providing critical self-reflections and using broader historical and analytical perspectives.Footnote ²⁸

Eurocentrism as a catch-all concept: Hobson’s anti-Eurocentrism

The most comprehensive study on Eurocentrism in IR comes from John M. Hobson. In The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics – Western International Theory, 1760–2010, he presents a detailed analysis of IRʼs historical interwovenness with Eurocentrism.Footnote ²⁹ IR theory is Eurocentric because it ʻseeks … to parochially celebrate or defend or promote the West as the proactive subject of, and as the highest or ideal normative referent in, world politicsʼ.Footnote ³⁰ When analysing this assumed role of IR, he tends to overlook the historical dimension. In Hobsonʼs picture, for a two-and-a-half century period, Eurocentrism emerges as a constant factor in shaping international thought, with only minor changes. Hence, IR is shown as a discipline constantly marked by a self-sustaining Eurocentrism.

Significantly, he suggests that Eurocentrism can take both imperialist and anti-imperialist forms, and does not see anti-imperialists as immune to Eurocentrism. Hobsonʼs stated aim is to uncover IRʼs Eurocentric myths. The foundationist myth about its noble identity is questioned, for he interprets IR as not being a mere ʻreflector of Eurocentrismʼ but as having actively helped in creating such a discourse. Hobson also attacks the ʻpositivist mythʼ, tying his criticism to the idea that IR is not value-free. This means that ʻwhen viewed through a non-Eurocentric lens the majority of international theory produces a parochial or provincial analysis of the West that masquerades as the universalʼ.Footnote ³¹

Hobson opposes ʻimputing a hidden imperialist politics into the text that the author did not intendʼ, and aims ʻto read the author in the spirit of that which I believe (s)he intendedʼ.Footnote ³² Notwithstanding this important notice, reading his book leaves the impression that none of famous world political thinkers or IR scholars managed to not be labelled as Eurocentrist. The list includes Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Norman Angell, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Mahan, and Heinrich von Treitschke in the period up to 1914, with Woodrow Wilson, Karl Haushofer, Lothrop Stoddard, Nikolai Bukharin, Alfred Zimmern, and Leonard Woolf as examples for the 1914–45 era. For the 1945–89 period, Robert Keohane, E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, Robert Gilpin, as well as Kenneth Waltz and English School members such as Hedley Bull and Adam Watson find themselves among the important names mentioned by Hobson. For the post-1989 years, there are ʻpaternalistsʼ such as Martha Nussbaum and John Rawls, offensive Eurocentrists like Niall Ferguson and Robert Kagan, with Samuel Huntington included as a defensive Eurocentrist, and neo-Marxist scholars seen as anti-paternalist Eurocentrists. Hobson perceives Wallersteinʼs world-system theory as one of the approaches that give the smallest extent of agency to the East, accusing this leading name of anti-Eurocentrism of Eurofetishism.Footnote ³³

These accusations show how Hobsonʼs broad critique generates a reification of Eurocentric biases in the discipline as these are turned into a (more or less) permanent phenomenon. Although his periodisations tied to different forms of Eurocentrism allow for some leeway in explaining the changes affecting it, Hobsonʼs virtual non-discrimination between IR scholars makes the study an overstated critique of Eurocentrism. Not tolerating any kind of explanation or analytical framework which tend to emphasise the role of the West (or Europe) in transforming the world leads him to find Eurocentrism everywhere, all the time. Even when Hobson acknowledges that one cannot interpret a specific case as manifest Eurocentrism, he calls it subliminal Eurocentrism where ʻall the monikersʼ of the former ʻare presentʼ but not directly visible.Footnote ³⁴ In the case of feminist IR, he asserts that ʻthere is a very thin (if not permeable) line between a genuine humanitarian feminist concern and a female imperial civilising missionʼ.Footnote ³⁵ Such a position requires us to ask who is to say where that thin line lies. In order to overcome this arbitrariness it becomes essential to approach Eurocentrism in a revisionist anti-Eurocentric manner that sees it as something whose scope and meaning changes in line with world historical dynamics and global power relations that influence the very nature of IR scholarship.

Interestingly, Hobson (together with George Lawson) discussed in an earlier work the relationship between history and IR, stating that a ʻscholarʼs choice of a particular mode of history becomes constitutive of the way in which (s)he theorises and understands international relationsʼ.Footnote ³⁶ Their focus was on four different modes of historical explanation that privileged a historicist historical sociology, with traditional and radical as well as non-historicist histories being the other options. However, the building blocks in this frame are levels of generality, ranging from micro-, and meso-, finally, to mega-levels. Although these are important points, they do not relate to my explanations on the different historiographies and historical schools with their varying interpretations of the emergence of modern world and the role of the European powers (or the West in general) in these processes (two important dimensions that I discuss in the subsequent sections). Nevertheless, their quote can serve in reminding us of differing interpretations and frames of events past. Therefore, basing a work of IR on a certain historical approach should not necessarily bring with itself accusations of Eurocentrism, but point to the ways in which different theories and understandings of world politics can coexist.

In the case of the English School, Hobson criticises its two leading members, referring to the famous opening remarks of Hedley Bull and Adam Watson in The Expansion of International Society: ʻ[b]ecause it was in fact Europe and not America, Asia or Africa that first dominated and in so doing, unified the world, it is not our perspective but the historical record itself that can be called Eurocentric.’Footnote ³⁷ Hobson attacks them with regard to the historical understanding they employ because it ʻexcludes almost all Eastern contributions to the rise of Europe and to globalizationʼ. This approach leads them ʻto treat Europe as a self-constituting and exceptional entity that self-generated through the logic of immanence, thereby denying the dialogical notions of an “other generated Europe” and the poly-civilizational “logic of confluence” that a non-Eurocentric approach would focus uponʼ.Footnote ³⁸ Hobson restates here his historiographical revisionism that aims to challenge historical accounts that see the Westʼs advanced position as a permanent condition.Footnote ³⁹ He counters these views by focusing on the role of the non-West in the advancement of the West. While pointing to the historical precedence of Asian powersʼ technological and material progress, his neglect of the overall world political order weakens his position vis-à-vis Bull and Watson who underlined the political significance of the European powers in dominating the world.

According to Hobson, ʻthe 19^th century is (re)presented as more racially intolerant and imperialist than it was so that the post-1989 era could be portrayed as more tolerant, culturally pluralist and anti-imperialist than it isʼ. Such a juxtaposition serves in his opinion as a means to generate the image of a modern IR that is less affected by racism and imperialism. On the other hand, he sees in the present period the re-emergence of manifest Eurocentrism that was replaced in the 1945–89 era with its subliminal form due to the impact of ʻcolonial-racist guilt syndromeʼ.Footnote ⁴⁰ He ignores thus the changing nature of Eurocentrism, assuming rather the possibility of cyclical changes among different extents of Eurocentrism.Footnote ⁴¹

To counter Hobsonʼs periodisation and categorisation of Eurocentric IR, it is useful to turn to the three forms of Eurocentrism that I offered above. The idea of historical-contextual, ideological, and residual Eurocentrisms can help us to recognise a disciplinary structure in which the impact of such biased perspectives is decreasing. The majority of pre- and early twentieth-century scholars and thinkers discussed by Hobson would be better understood as historical-contextual Eurocentrics whose positions were shaped by the conjunctural givens of the world political dynamics of their time and place. Therefore, with regard to thinkers and scholars whom Hobson mentions in the period up to the mid-twentieth century, it is important to understand their Eurocentrism as mainly a historical-contextual version that was shaped by the concomitant European global power of the era, its conjunctural character being a primary defining feature. Of a secondary dimension was the impact of ideological Eurocentrics whose influence would decrease with the emergence of a different world and international order throughout the twentieth century.

With regard to scholars of the later periods, especially those of the mid- to late-twentieth century, overwhelming changes in the global constellation meant that a self-conscious Eurocentric approach in analysing world politics would be only understandable as a form of ideological Eurocentrism. This observation also covers the post-1989 period in which Hobson sees a rerun by scholars towards explicit declarations about ʻthe inherent superiority of Western civilizationʼ. He asserts that these scholars are quite happy about the post-Cold War possibilities present for the West with new forms of international hierarchy and gradated sovereignty.Footnote ⁴² However, Hobsonʼs suggestion about the return of manifest Eurocentrism fails to explain the difference between a historically shaped understanding of a world order dominated by the European great powers and the ideological assertiveness of a Eurocentric perspective detached from a given tempo-spatial frame. Therefore, Hobsonʼs strict anti-Eurocentrism recognises only a few studies as non-Eurocentric such as recent works in neo-Marxist and English School approaches.Footnote ⁴³ This shows that not differentiating between ideological Eurocentrism and residual Eurocentrism leads to a story of Eurocentrism in IR, which takes the shape of a cyclical historical pattern. Overlooking the fact that conjunctural forms of Eurocentrism have become a part of the past, Hobson tends to attack twenty-first-century IR without much differentiation. His insistence on IRʼs supposedly continuing attachment to ʻWestern civilisationʼ leads him to overlook the extent to which IR has transformed itself into a less Eurocentric discipline. This change is visible not only through IRʼs theoretical interest in other parts of the world, but also by changes that take place in our textbooks without great fanfare and public acknowledgement, contributing thus to the ongoing and gradual decrease of Eurocentrism in IR.Footnote ⁴⁴ As textbooks are among the most influential sources in shaping IRʼs next generation of scholars, it is highly relevant that they are not repeating the approaches of the older ones.

Hobson disregards non-Eurocentrismʼs influence in IR, for he conflates the origins of the discipline with its present. Whereas recent studies about IRʼs historical trajectories have successfully illuminated the problematic roots of the discipline that reach back to ideas marked by imperialism and racism,Footnote ⁴⁵ seeing in modern IR a direct continuation of these tendencies would be an exaggerated approach, especially if one talks of the discipline as a whole. If the actual context of IRʼs birth as a Eurocentric discipline is not taken into account, then it becomes possible (as seen in Hobsonʼs work) to label virtually all theoretical approaches as Eurocentric. However, as I elaborate in more detail in the following two sections, IR is undergoing a gradual de-Eurocentricisation (despite its Eurocentric origins), as global political changes also affect our scholarship. The infamous relationship between power and knowledge is still out there, but the growing self-reflexivity in our discipline enables us, at the same time, to more consciously detach ourselves from IRʼs Eurocentric foundations. This last aspect is important because it signifies that even under conditions of a less rapid decrease in Western power, more and more Western scholars (and future scholars reading todayʼs textbooks and critical scholarship) will gradually turn to less Eurocentric insights. The weakening of ideological Eurocentrism that is a result of more recent (critical and revisionist) publications can therefore have an overall impact on the disciplineʼs anti-Eurocentric thinking, while this new scholarship also leads to a concomitant decrease in the role of residual Eurocentrism.

An additional challenge to Hobson is that he fails to consider the degree to which IR has become a global discipline in which non-Western approaches make their own contributions with both non-Eurocentric and Eurocentric perspectivesFootnote ⁴⁶ because his emphasis is only on IR produced in the West. Therefore, he also disregards Eurocentric IR that exists, rather ironically but also naturally due to the reasons I explain below, in the non-Western scholarship. Finally, questioning the degree to which IR scholars are prepared to admit the Eurocentricness of the discipline, Hobson asks whether they would see it as a problem or not.Footnote ⁴⁷ This is not only important with regard to the possibility of some scholars declaring themselves as Eurocentrists and defending their attitudes, but also because it reminds us of the extent to which IR lacks open debates on (the degree of) its Eurocentrism. Remembering the rise of feminist IR and the subsequent reaction it received from mainstream scholarship, it strikes one that so far no Keohane-style recognition or engagement has taken place.Footnote ⁴⁸ Although one can talk of an anti-Eurocentrist wave, it seems that this has not generated a broad intra-disciplinary discussion on the continuing problems of Eurocentric scholarship. Notwithstanding the intermittent engagement of more mainstream scholars such as Buzan and Little with this problematique,Footnote ⁴⁹ Eurocentrism has not generated a real dialogue among different IR scholarly communities. Still, it is important to note that it is now an issue that gets openly acknowledged in ISA presidential addresses or LSE inaugural lectures.Footnote ⁵⁰

Considering the relevance of conjunctural developments helps us to understand the reasons of this failure to more openly deal with Eurocentrism. IRʼs original Eurocentric features were a result of the era in which the discipline emerged. Later world political changes significantly restructured our field of study. Eurocentrismʼs gradual decline was triggered by the demise of a world order in which the centrality of Europe appeared to be insurmountable. The stage was now free for two different forms of Eurocentrism: one strong version based on ideological attachment, and a weaker residual type marked more by ignorance or scholarly failure in updating oneʼs viewpoints in line with a changing environment. The consequent criticisms presented by anti-Eurocentric scholars took such a global dimension that it became virtually impossible to deal with it in its complexity. Their criticism was not just about a certain stage of IR knowledge formation or its practices. It covered both the epistemological dimension and the origins of IR, attacking scholarsʼ attitudes and the way publications were managed. This overextension of anti-Eurocentrist positions has in turn failed to generate a viable debate. When our understanding of Eurocentrism becomes a more specific one that does not mix discussions about historiographical differences with Eurocentric biases, scholars can more easily perceive problems posed by ideological and residual forms of Eurocentric IR. This necessitates focusing more on the problems of residual Eurocentrism and some instances of ideological Eurocentrism instead of presenting generic criticisms of Eurocentrism that do not consider the challenges faced in the relationship between the Western power and global knowledge production. Thus, important concepts of anti-Eurocentric scholarship such as Homi Bhabhaʼs hybridity are, pace other scholarsʼ scepticism,Footnote ⁵¹ not less but more relevant in todayʼs world, as the global political constellation allows more equal conditions under which the co-constitutive processes which Hobson mentioned in a different contextFootnote ⁵² can become more easily established.

‘The historical record’: Eurocentric IR and history

In order to overcome mutual accusations of Eurocentrism that prevail even within anti-Eurocentric scholarship, it becomes important to understand the significance of the historiographical dimension. It would be an instance of conceptual overstretch to employ Wallersteinʼs idea of anti-Eurocentric Eurocentrism in a serious manner. Therefore, we need to note that the main points of contestation in this kind of debate concern issues of historical interpretation. For surmounting these legacies, scholars need to be clear about their geo-historical epistemologies and the historiographical choices they make.

A closer understanding of historiographical differences can make IR perceive the ways in which one cannot speak of a single definitive ʻhistorical recordʼ. In other words, it is not sufficient to criticise certain IR scholars of Eurocentrism for having failed to deal with the role, impact, and (re)actions of the non-Western world. Otherwise, the frequent inclination of anti-Eurocentrist critics to equate the non-presence of the non-Western actors as active agents (in any research) with Eurocentrism leads just to an avalanche of perceived Eurocentric biases everywhere in IR.Footnote ⁵³

IR scholarship needs to be able to recognise a given scholarʼs historical perspective. Therefore, it would be a good practice for scholars to acknowledge, at some point, the historiographical approach or historical school they follow. This would enable their audience to understand what kind of historical perspective is at use in a study. It could also help to think of any historical perspective one implements as reflecting a geo-historically determined epistemological framework. In this case, two different processes are at work. First, the scholar is studying an issue area not only within the broad geocultural epistemology that shapes his/her approach. He/she is also consciously or unconsciously deciding to prioritise one of the actors on the level of geo-historical interpretations. Therefore, a scholar is either close to an interpretation in which the Western rise to global dominance is a ʻreal historical recordʼ, or he/she is prone to a viewpoint based on the (greater) relevance of non-Western actions or on the significance of continuous interactions between the non-Western and Western actors within the same time frame. This first dimension is only partially open to revisions, and it is for this reason that it can be called geo-historical epistemology. Secondly, the same scholar has to decide what kind of historiography he/she wants to follow. Simultaneously using studies provided by different (and perhaps conflicting) historical schools would only weaken IR scholarship, as its disregard for history would show its reliance on historical studies to be of an ad hoc and unserious character.

As a scholar who favours going beyond postcolonialism towards decolonising IR, B. G. Jones states that ʻ[t]he standard historical preference points of the disciplineʼs renderings of international relations are drawn almost exclusively from Europeʼs “internal” history.’ The focus on the Peace of Westphalia and the concomitant emergence of a European state system becomes, in the eyes of decolonialist scholars, more problematic with regard to IRʼs disciplinary canon with its inclusion of only ʻEuropean political thoughtʼ.Footnote ⁵⁴ While it is difficult to reject the usage of European classical thought as (more or less) the only philosophical tool when developing theoretical frameworks, the reason as well as temporal limits of such a preference become clear when thinking of these choices as results of a given periodʼs power relations. Even if one disregards the contemporary issue of the actual availability of non-Western philosophical works that could be used in world political analysis,Footnote ⁵⁵ it is again possible to assert that IRʼs Eurocentrism was a consequence of a given periodʼs power dynamics.Footnote ⁵⁶ This explains why we are witnessing in the last two decades a real increase in IRʼs turn to non-Western sources. This process is underway not only in non-Western IR communities but also among IR scholars in the West. While ancient Greece and its philosophers continue to be an inspiration for twenty-first-century IR theorising,Footnote ⁵⁷ it is among English Schoolʼs most significant scholars that an interest for non-Western IR starts to emerge, too.Footnote ⁵⁸ The decline of a Eurocentric world order brings with itself the demise of a Eurocentric IR. Obviously, it is difficult to assert that this is a sudden process of complete transformation.Footnote ⁵⁹ Nevertheless, important scholarly and analytical works point out that the Western-dominated world order is already past its apogee, and/or facing challengers such as China and other emerging powers like Brazil and India.Footnote ⁶⁰

A recent example illustrates how criticisms based on historical interpretation can often weaken anti-Eurocentrist scholarship. In their study on the nineteenth centuryʼs significance for the discipline, Barry Buzan and George Lawson complain about IRʼs lacking focus on this era, although it was a time of ʻthe global transformationʼ in which industrialisation, rational state-building, and ideologies of progress led to the birth of what we know as modernity. Defending convincingly the need for a closer engagement with the nineteenth century in IR, they carefully add that their aim is ʻnot to replicateʼ nor ʻreinforce Eurocentric accounts of “the European miracle”ʼ. Most importantly, unlike previous generations of English School scholars, they explicitly recognise imperialist dimensions of the European expansion of the time, referring to ʻEuropean efficiency at killingʼ as a major distinction of the era.Footnote ⁶¹ Based on these premises, it seems that one would not label their work Eurocentric.Footnote ⁶² However, this is not the case. Of the three short reactions to the Buzan and Lawson article, two reviews discuss (clues of) Eurocentrism they find in the article. According to Paul Musgrave and Daniel H. Nexon, it is good that Buzan and Lawson ʻreject Eurocentric explanations for global political development, but it is striking that in their story non-European actors are largely the objects, not the subjects, of the political, technological, and social forces they describeʼ.Footnote ⁶³ In turn, Andrew Phillips sees a lack of Eastern agency in their analysis, for the authors are said to ignore the extent to which Western actors relied on ʻindigenous intermediariesʼ in the ʻtake-over of traditional Asian power centersʼ. He criticises them for ʻoverlook[ing] the constraints this dependence on local allies had on Western efforts to promote rational state-building and ideologies of progressʼ there.Footnote ⁶⁴

Notwithstanding all their anti-Eurocentric caveats and their warning against a narrow focus merely on the European experience, Buzan and Lawson do not seem to have convinced their colleagues about their non-Eurocentrism. This situation exemplifies to what extent anti-Eurocentrism has been turned into an overused tool of critique, with virtually unlimited possibilities for labeling a work Eurocentric. Such criticisms empty Eurocentrism out of its aspects that retain their relevance in early twenty-first-century IR scholarship, while focusing mostly on historiographical differences leads us to ignore significant problems posed by ideological and residual Eurocentrism.

In order to provide a different take on Eurocentrism, it is useful to turn to two German historians, Jürgen Osterhammel and Dieter Langewiesche. Both of them underline the difference of the nineteenth century, pointing to Europeʼs global impact. Osterhammel emphasises in his opus magnum about nineteenth-century world history how the European dominance in power as well as economic and cultural capacities makes it impossible to approach this era in a way that ignores ʻEuropeʼs centralityʼ therein. He suggests that the nineteenth century is the most European century.Footnote ⁶⁵ Importantly, he develops these positions from a decidedly anti-Eurocentric standpoint, rejecting ʻEurocentric homogeneity assumptionsʼ.Footnote ⁶⁶ Osterhammelʼs position demonstrates that the critics of Eurocentrism are too rigid with their assumption that any agential privileging of Western actors testifies to the presence of inherent Eurocentric biases in such a study.

Similarly, Langewiesche suggests that it is no sign of Eurocentrism to ʻspeak of the century of Europeʼ in the case of the nineteenth century but ʻa description of the realityʼ because the ʻold worldʼ with its ʻpolycentricʼ order came by then to an end.Footnote ⁶⁷ This, combined with the continuing dominance of European powers well into the mid-twentieth century, makes it understandable why IR as a newly emerging social scientific enterprise would be influenced by a given timeʼs dominant powers, and why such interpretations of the past should not be directly interpreted as instances of Eurocentric IR.

These difficulties point to Eurocentrism as an idea that has reached its conceptual limits. If any scholarly work that takes its assumptions from within a framework that does not overlap with the viewpoints of certain anti-Eurocentrists is blamed as Eurocentric, this could lead in due time not to less but more Eurocentrism. In other words, the critics of Eurocentrism need to revise the way they evaluate Eurocentricness. The most useful way in which IR can succeed in this is to rethink its relationship with a neighbouring discipline: history. History, exactly like IR, is not a homogenous discipline. Neither do historians provide a commonly held explanatory framework or historical narrative. There exists no historiographical consensus upon which the critics of Eurocentrism in IR can rely.Footnote ⁶⁸ If one does not take the easy step of calling all historiographical work that differs from the viewpoint of many anti-Eurocentrists irrelevant or itself Eurocentric, then it is essential to understand that scholars of IR should be free in their choice of a given historiographical school when turning in their research to a historical dimension.Footnote ⁶⁹

At this juncture, it becomes possible to propose a reframing of the way in which criticisms of IRʼs Eurocentric biases function. I propose to make discussions concerning ʻthe real historical recordʼ less fundamental when talking of Eurocentrism. Otherwise, this concept loses its coherence, turning into a tool of critique to be used at anytime against any scholarly undertaking. Such a revisionist anti-Eurocentrism can emerge if IR scholars reach an understanding about the mutual coexistence of differing historical accounts. Taking seriously a scholarʼs perceptual-ideational starting point in the form of geo-historical epistemologies can in turn pave the way for a broader disciplinary emphasis on serious cases of Eurocentric biases in IR.

For a reframing of anti-Eurocentric criticism, it is necessary that scholarsʼ reference to historical events is no longer used by itself for deciding whether their work is Eurocentric. A pluralist discipline overcoming Eurocentrism can only emerge under conditions of mutual recognition for scholarsʼ differing geo-historical epistemologies. Such a revision in IRʼs relationship with (the discipline of) history can help us to concentrate more actively on fighting the three forms of Eurocentrism that still present a problem. There are suggestions that even IR scholarsʼ history-related amateurism could provide us with more knowledge in using historiansʼ works. For Halvard Leira, more intense connection to history could enable IR to go beyond its Eurocentric ontology.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, such an approach should still pay attention to intra-history differences of interpretation and the way we use their evaluations of a certain issue.Footnote ⁷¹ Therefore, a careful and broader engagement with history can provide more specific criticisms of Eurocentrism, leaving behind general(ised) assumptions of Eurocentrismʼs omnipresence in IR.Footnote ⁷² At the same time, we should not forget that even within history, there are always critics who perceive an important study as Eurocentric. A very significant book, seen by many anti-Eurocentric IR scholars as their favourite tool in fighting Eurocentrism, can be interpreted by some historians as ʻreproducing … a familiar portrait of cosmopolitan history as Europeʼs mirrorʼ.Footnote ⁷³

The post-Western world and Eurocentric IR’s gradual decline

Anti-Eurocentrists of the twenty-first century have overlooked earlier scholarsʼ observations on IRʼs Eurocentrism that were similar to their own. Hedley Bullʼs insight, already provided by the 1970s, about a decreasing relevance of European/Western powers in determining the shape of the global order is even more relevant today. He started by observing that ʻ[a]t first sight the theory of international relations in this century has been overwhelmingly Western, predominantly Anglo-American.’ Although acknowledging the importance of related works by Lenin or Mao, he asserted that if we look to ʻthe comprehensive, explanatory theory of how states and other agents in world politics do and should behave …, the conclusion … is that in this century such theory has come almost exclusively from the Westʼ.Footnote ⁷⁴ Bull asked thus ʻWhy has theory of this sort flourished only in the West?ʼ and found possible answers in ʻthe unique strength in the West of the tradition of detached investigation of social affairsʼ as well as in ʻa deeper attachment in the West to “international relations” as a perspective from which to view the politics of the world as a wholeʼ.Footnote ⁷⁵ While his first point ties to the idea of applied enlightenment that symbolises the Western advance,Footnote ⁷⁶ his second point is explainable with regard to European great powers and their world political roles. Accordingly, it becomes possible to see a significant connection between Europeans as the first world political entity to dominate in diverse forms virtually the whole world and the suggestion that they were the ones to develop the first holistic perspective, which was nevertheless, and naturally, a parochial one.

Bullʼs point tied to a critical statement about the future of a Western-led world order as he asked ʻif the theories that are available are almost exclusively Western in origin and perspective, can they convey an adequate understanding of a world system that is predominantly non-Western?ʼFootnote ⁷⁷ This point shows that recent reflexivist scholarship is not that original in questioning Eurocentrism. More than four decades ago, a leading English Schooler was reflexive enough to recognise the inherent difficulty of staying attached to an IR that could not cope with transformation. His approach demonstrates how a changing international political order in which the European (and Western) powers lose their earlier influence was destined to, and did, affect the nature of IR and its theoretical framework.Footnote ⁷⁸ It also points to the usefulness of thinking about IRʼs trajectory in terms of its historical situatedness in different world political contexts.

According to Stanley Hoffmann, countries with less world political significance lacked the motivation for international politics, with the result being their disinterest in studying IR.Footnote ⁷⁹ Much before todayʼs interest in self-reflexivity, he denounced the inherent dangers of a discipline that was too closely associated with, and influenced by, the US. In this context, he defended a perspective shift toward ʻthe weak and revolutionaryʼ, asking for the inclusion of non-Western actors in IR.Footnote ⁸⁰ His remarks, not dissimilar from Bullʼs call for a broader approach in studying and theorising world politics, show how the discipline was in need of not remaining stuck to a US-centric perspective. At this point, Eurocentrism was already carried over into a Western-centric IR whose most active community consisted of American IR scholars. Thus, anti-Western-centric observations preceded in fact IRʼs late twentieth and early twenty-first-century reflexive turn, recognising also the impact of world political changes on the need for de-Eurocentricisation.

Based on these observations, it is important to understand how IRʼs emergence as a discipline and the rise of Western/European powers evolved as interwoven processes. After explaining the impact of this for IRʼs immanent Eurocentrism, I turn to todayʼs IR and underline Eurocentrismʼs decline at a time in which the international system is marked less by the Western powers. Looking at this trend paves the way for comprehending how post-Western IR in a less Eurocentric world order also leads to a less Eurocentric IR (hopefully not to be replaced by another, such as Asian-centrism).

Heikki Patomäki asserts that IR continues to be Eurocentric. According to him, the world history used by our discipline ʻbecomes implicitly a story of European modernity and international institutions expanding to other parts of the worldʼ. For Patomäki, critically-minded poststructuralists could turn our attention to ʻthe idea of counterfactual possibilitiesʼ. It means that ʻworld history could also have been otherwiseʼ.Footnote ⁸¹ He asserts that European superiority emerged only after 1815 (Hobsonʼs focus on the mid-nineteenth century as the time of Westʼs ascendance provides a similar observation) ʻand even then only for a relatively short periodʼ.Footnote ⁸² However, the important point, with regard to the specific case of IRʼs disciplinary history, is not the longevity of Western domination but its exact overlapping with the development of social sciences and their structural implementation as university disciplines. This meant that a Eurocentric IR was a quasi-natural consequence of the tempo-spatial givens that influenced the disciplineʼs birth and further development. In light of this, it becomes difficult to accept Patomäkiʼs suggestion to see it as coincidence ʻthat the international problematic was first articulated in Europeʼ. It is not possible to interpret this as ʻa historical possibility that could easily have been otherwiseʼ.Footnote ⁸³ IR was Eurocentric in its origins because the world was a Eurocentric one.Footnote ⁸⁴

Immanuel Wallerstein applies, with regard to social sciences in general, a similar explanation:

Wallerstein notes that the last two centuries have witnessed the European domination of the world, in terms of economic, military, and technological advancement. For him, ʻ[t]hese facts seem largely uncontested, and are indeed hard to contest plausibly.’

In this context, it is useful to turn to Hans Morgenthau for whom political thinking is standortgebunden, which means that it is ʻtied to a particular social situationʼ. Thus, ʻall great and fruitful political thought … has started from a concrete political situation with which the political thinkers had to come to terms for both intellectual and practical reasons.’Footnote ⁸⁶ This suggestion provides an important perspective for dealing with the emergence and development of IR as a Eurocentric social science in its initial decades. It was born at a time of European powersʼ world political dominance that coincided with these same powersʼ material, ideational, and geographical hegemony. Such a starting position meant that the questions and the answers with which IR was responsible to come forward could not but not be Eurocentric. Many important studies on IRʼs origins focused on the disciplineʼs gradual emergence in the period between 1880–1920,Footnote ⁸⁷ one that overlaps with the era of European powersʼ global dominance.Footnote ⁸⁸ For Pierre Lizée, IRʼs disregard for the non-West derives from the fact that it was American and European scholars who provided the new discipline with ʻits basic vocabularyʼ, which was based on their conditions and experiences. Therefore, it was only natural that ʻthe problems of the Western worldʼ emerged as IRʼs focal points.Footnote ⁸⁹

According to Mario Telò, ʻthe end of European centrality (and Eurocentrism) eventually served to universalize the state-centric model of international relations by exporting it to Asia, Africa and the Americasʼ.Footnote ⁹⁰ This is an interesting observation, because the temporal framework implied by Telò refers to the rather ironic fashion in which IR as a discipline with European origins gained a broader audience at a time when European powersʼ world political dominance was coming, with developments like decolonisation and the emergence of non-Western powers, to an end. It is in this context that he also calls for overcoming ʻany sense of Eurocentrism … in a world where Europeʼs relative placeʼ is no more the same.Footnote ⁹¹

Arlene Tickner and Ole Wæver contributed to the debate on IRʼs global diversity, underlining the significant role played by geocultural epistemologies. Following Sandra Harding,Footnote ⁹² they point to geocultural factorsʼ influence on epistemological perspectives. Different places generate varying ideational and structural constraints but also possibilities for shaping the way IR develops in national and regional contexts. The authors conclude that ʻsocially, doing IR means something different in different parts of the worldʼ.Footnote ⁹³ While Tickner and Wæver criticise the ʻhegemonic, positivist, and Western IRʼ and aim to go beyond, surprisingly no direct engagement with Eurocentrism takes place in their volume.Footnote ⁹⁴ They speak up against the privileged position of ʻWestern/core experiencesʼ that influence IRʼs research agenda and theoretical framework and defend peripheral IR communitiesʼ right to exist with their differing geocultural epistemologies. However, they do not provide a more historically grounded explanation for these differences that led to a global IR which is not always the same thing with a US-led mainstream IR, but is always to some extent shaped by the latter.Footnote ⁹⁵

This brings us to the issue of whether IR serves just as an ideational transmitting belt for the powers of a given period. An answer to this question requires us to turn to the idea of post-Western IR that can take shape in a post-Western world. According to Lizée, it is not the case that ʻthe non-Western world should start to matter just nowʼ because its presence in world politics has been a constant reality. However, considering the degree of its influence, it is only in the second half of the twentieth and especially early twenty-first century that non-Western powers have started to play a globally active role in determining the international order. This does not mean that they were without any agential capacity in the past. To the contrary, the European dominance in global affairs was a result of their mutual interactions, not a one-way imposition of the Western actors. What matters is, nevertheless, that non-Western actors participated in world politics not on the global scale and not as the ultimate decision-makers. This leads to two points. First, they were active in their own regions, or at most, within their broader spheres of influence. But no non-Western power had a global influence, a point that differentiates them strongly from their European counterparts. The second dimension relates to the limits of non-Western actors. It is their lack of power with regard to the Europeans that prevented them from having the final say in the gradual establishment of the international society as we know it. Yet, the major caveat here needs to be repeated, namely even the European-dominated world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was one in which the non-Europeans were active players with their own agential capacity.

Under those conditions, analyses on non-West in IR were ʻframed by concepts and theories … geared much more toward Western problems and worldviewsʼ.Footnote ⁹⁶ However, today, at a time in history in which the non-Western powers are actively challenging, and changing, the existing Western-shaped international order, IRʼs universality assumption cannot succeed, according to Lizée, in providing a useful view of the non-Western ideas on world politics. Still, he is careful to extend his critique to studies of IR also outside the West, pointing to the need for non-Western scholarship to ʻturn itself outwardʼ. Neither the universality assumptions of Western IR nor non-Western IRʼs particularisms are ideal positions to make IR a more global discipline within the broader context of ʻthe new global politics of the post-Western worldʼ.Footnote ⁹⁷

According to Amitav Acharya, IR ʻneglects or marginalizes the world beyond the Westʼ.Footnote ⁹⁸ He proposes to develop new theories from outside the West without displacing Western theories or ideas and experiences of the West. Acharya underlines the connections between great powers such as Great Britain and the US and the way IR knowledge is generated, warning against the fact that national schools of IR can be interpreted as ʻrationalisations of a countryʼs … decline or riseʼ. This leads him to ask whether ʻprogress in IR require[s] fighting American and European ethnocentrism with Chinese and Indian ethnocentrismʼ.Footnote ⁹⁹ This is in line with his general scepticism towards the suitability of ʻpost-Westernʼ, because it could signify ʻthe end of Western dominance as an objective fact or a normative aspiration, neither of which is accurate or helpful for the purpose of making IR theory more inclusiveʼ.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ However, I argue in this article that it is more useful to move to a perspective that more broadly recognises the end of a world in which the Western powers had the ultimate say. Post-Western means that both the world in which we live is shaped more by the non-West (and thus relatively less by the West), and that the discipline of IR is gradually adjusting itself to this more global structure of knowledge production. It is essential, nonetheless, to keep in mind that these developments do not bring about an effective end of Eurocentrism in IR immediately. A non-Eurocentric or non-Western-centric international system will still be analysed by a mixture of ideological and residual Eurocentrism, but not by its historical-contextual version.

Important to consider, when looking at the rise and fall of Eurocentric IR, is the role of scholarly generations. With time, the paradigms affecting the disciplinary community have changed, not coincidentally, through successive changes of generations. In a Kuhnian fashion, this enabled the overall shifts in international political order to be more directly reflected in IRʼs analytical frameworks. As shown in the context of the English School, one generationʼs Eurocentric biases paved the way to a later generationʼs anti-Eurocentric critical studies. On a similar level, IRʼs recent interest in its (earlier) Eurocentric assumptions can be interpreted as a consequence of the emerging post-Cold War global order simultaneously defined by the rise of non-Western powers. These changes have led to the development of new research agendas that also tie in non-Western regions into IRʼs theorising or aim to directly engage with the aspirations of non-Western rising powers.Footnote ¹⁰¹ A different perceptual reality generates a new generation of scholars more prone to revise the original starting points of the discipline. A decreasingly Eurocentrist discipline allows its scholars to problematise aspects that were not considered in a critical manner earlier.Footnote ¹⁰²

Notwithstanding such changes, Eurocentrism can still have some impact due to ʻthe international inequalities in the production and circulation of knowledge and the marginalization of scholarship from outside North America and Europeʼ.Footnote ¹⁰³ Whereas this observation refers to the lack of resources and inability to access international publishing venues faced by scholars of the non-Western peripheries,Footnote ¹⁰⁴ there is another aspect that explains how Eurocentrism survived in IR: the understudied influence ʻolderʼ scholarship has on peripheral IR communities. Non-Western scholars have a much greater familiarity with Western IR literature of the Cold War era. Consequently, the old disciplinary canon generates a residual Eurocentrism in non-Western scholarship as texts written in the pre-decolonisation era are much more direct reflectors of historical-contextual Eurocentrism, itself the result of a time in which European (Western) great powers dominated the world and shaped the international order.

While the old generationʼs Eurocentric points started to have a lesser impact on current Western IR, and became a target for anti-Eurocentric critics in the West, their colleagues in non-Western peripheries are still more influenced by older works. One of the reasons is their latecomer status, which means they need to read older works of Western scholars due to the broader reputation the latter have. These circumstances lead them to engage less critically and more directly with scholarship shaped by conjunctural and ideological Eurocentrism, even in spite of their own positions within non-Western academic settings. Another reason lies in the fact that non-Western IR communities have to make use of the existing (bibliographical) resources in order to prove their level of knowledge within the local social scientific community. Under such conditions, reproduction and retransmission are not only easier tasks but also necessary for empowering the new IR scholarship in the non-Western university structures in a faster manner. These scholars lack(ed) opportunities available to their Western colleagues that could enable a more critical engagement with IRʼs Eurocentric canon. In this regard, there arises the rather surprising possibility that non-Western scholars are inclined to a less critical engagement with, and even greater implementation of, Eurocentric perspectives due to their closer attachment to an older generation of IR scholars and canonic works with heavier dosages of conjunctural Eurocentrism. As a consequence of these factors, there is a growing recognition among anti-Eurocentrist scholars that one cannot always turn to non-Western scholarship as a means of de-Eurocentricisation because there is a historically shaped Western impact on these non-Western IR communities too.Footnote ¹⁰⁵