1.1 The modern state system, geopolitics and imperial rivalry

The conventional understanding in much International Relations (IR) scholarship is that the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 forms the basis for what many would recognise today as the modern nation state. The Peace of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Years War that involved various European powers. It consisted of the Treaty of Münster and the Treaty of Osnabrück, both signed in 1648. These treaties established the principle of autonomous and sovereign nation states in Europe that would not interfere with one another’s domestic affairs.

The Westphalian settlement, and its associated ideas of territoriality, sovereignty and autonomy, are seen by many IR scholars as the starting point for the modern state system, in the European context at least, and therefore the international relations that followed. However, this only tells part of the story of state formation and how the territorial units that we see on the political map today came about. Another story can be told through a different form of organising world politics – that of imperial administration and competition over territories far away from the European centres of imperial power. This allows us to explore how other forms of territorial divisions came about, in part through geopolitical competition and rivalry, but also in response to seismic events such as the First and Second World Wars, which have shaped understanding of international relations as both a phenomena and academic discipline.