Introduction: Forum on Adom Getachew’s ‘Worldmaking after Empire’
| Author | Jens Bartelson,Patrick Thaddeus Jackson |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820935173 |
| Subject Matter | Book Forum |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829820935173
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2020, Vol. 48(3) 334 –339
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829820935173
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1. Classical statements of this view include Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New
York: McGraw-Hill, [1948] 1985), 294; Leo Gross, ‘The Peace of Westphalia, 1648–1948’,
in International Law and Organization, eds. Richard A. Falk and W. Hanreider (New York:
J.B. Lippincott, 1968: 46–67), ; John Herz, ‘Rise and Demise of the Territorial State’, World
Politics 9, no. 4 (1957): 473–93. For analyses, see Sebastian Schmidt, ‘To Order the Minds
Introduction: Forum on Adom
Getachew’s ‘Worldmaking
after Empire’
Jens Bartelson
Lund University, Sweden
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
American University, USA
Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination
(Princeton University Press, 2019) is the winner of the 2019 best book of the year award
presented by the Theory section of the International Studies Association. We are pleased
to convene this forum on the book, which features four scholarly engagements and a
reply by the author. In this introduction to the forum, we briefly introduce Getachew’s
main argument, and situate the book within some contemporary debates in international
theory, global intellectual history, and international law.
Getachew’s point of departure is what we might call the standard story of how the
form of the sovereign territorial state came to dominate the organisation of international
affairs. This story begins with ‘Westphalia’, the supposed origin point of a principle of
government and governance based on the formal equality of discrete political units that
recognised one another as the legitimate rulers of their particular territories.1 With the
Corresponding author:
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, District of Columbia,
District of Columbia 20016, USA.
Email: ptjack@american.edu
935173MIL0010.1177/0305829820935173Millennium: Journal of International StudiesBartelson and Jackson
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