This work presents a myth-busting account of how class conflict
and economic development, and not only interstate rivalry, led
to the emergence of the modern state system. Inspired by the
groundbreaking historical work of Robert Brenner, Teschke argues
that property relations provide the key to unlocking the
changing meaning of 'international' across the medieval, early
modern and modern periods. Challenging the reification of the
Treaty of Westphalia, Teschke shows that international politics
remained under the control of dynastic and absolutist political
elites that were rooted in feudal property regimes. The book
rejects a commonplace of European history: that the treaties of
Westphalia not only closed the Thirty Years’ War but also
inaugurated a new international order driven by the interaction
of territorial sovereign states. Benno Teschke, through this
thorough and incisive critique, argues that this is not the
case. Domestic ‘social property relations’ shaped international
relations in continental Euro