12 State, Territoriality, and Sovereignty

This chapter considers three concepts—state, territory, sovereignty—by examining how each has been formulated in scholarship at or near the intersection between International Relations (IR) and History, and how those formulations have yielded particular approaches to the study of historical international politics. Exhaustively reviewing scholarship on these three concepts is impossible, thanks to the expansiveness of the terms and the numerous academic disciplines that have addressed them. Instead, this chapter focuses on three loosely defined bodies of work: literature that explicitly addresses the intersection of History and IR, literature not framed in these terms that has nonetheless been foundational to discussions in IR and History, and literature that is further afield but could be productively brought to bear.¹

These concepts are fundamental to the intersection of History and IR, and their study has given rise to many of the overlaps between the two fields. Moreover, historical interrogations of these concepts have played an essential role in IR theoretical debates and the evolution of IR as a whole. For example, Ruggie’s critique of neorealism was focused on the latter’s inability to explain ‘the shift from the medieval to the modern international system’ (1983, 273), and many subsequent foundational works of constructivist IR have examined historical transformations in state, territory, and sovereignty (e.g. Kratochwil 1986; Ruggie 1993). All three concepts are also deeply interwoven with the concerns of this volume. Modernity itself is in part defined by the emergence of the ‘modern’ forms of state, territory, and sovereignty—including a problematic Eurocentric focus across how all three have been defined and studied. The granularity of research has shifted over time, from initial studies largely focused on broad questions of the ‘international system’ to more fine-grained analysis of particular practices or contextually specific ideas.

Yet these three concepts remain challenging to study. Each can be difficult to pin down, let alone operationalize for empirical research (often acknowledged with regards to sovereignty, but equally challenging with the other two). Furthermore, it can be difficult to distinguish state, territory, and sovereignty analytically—after all, even the Weberian definition of the state includes territory. Identifying exactly which of the three concepts a particular study is (most) focused on, however, is important and is one of the core tasks of this chapter. The significant differences in explanatory targets have often been obscured by an explicit focus on debates about causal drivers or conditions. This chapter thus asks how each concept has been examined, especially as an outcome, addressing each in turn—state, sovereignty, and finally territory—in order to track how the literature has changed over time. We then conclude by discussing broad critiques and possible future directions for research.

On ‘the state’, literature at the intersection of History and IR has tended to assume a particular type of state and then ask about its origins: state formation, in short. In IR, this question was initially posed in reaction to the assumption that the units of international politics were unchanging, at least in their important characteristics. The studies that have emerged vary in what they consider to be the defining features of ‘the state’ or ‘the modern state’, with implications for the commensurability of findings. Spruyt’s (2002) review distinguishes among several explanatory traditions, each of which emphasizes different causal factors and processes: war-making, economic change, institutional development, and ideas. (See Vu (2010) for a review of the related literature from comparative politics.)

One line of research has focused on war as a driver of increasing state capacity and reach, most prominently in several books by Charles Tilly (esp. 1992). He argues that states represent a particular type of ‘coercion-wielding organizations’ whose characteristics are at least in part explained by the ‘organization of coercion and preparation for war’. The simplified version of this is that ‘war made states, and vice versa’ (1992, chapter 3), but the argument builds on a careful reading of how political rulers and organizations in different circumstances went about extracting resources and organizing for war.² From the beginning, this line of argument has been closely connected with work by historians, such as studies of changing military technology, tactics, and organization (e.g. McNeill 1982).

Another research tradition has examined economic drivers of the emergence of modern states, focusing more on the capacity to enforce property rights and promote trade. Influential early research was by Douglass North (e.g. North and Thomas 1973) and other economic historians. This has been foundational to IR studies examining the economics of state emergence, including comparisons of economic versus war-making factors (e.g. Abramson 2017). Economic processes are also emphasized by work that applies a Marxist perspective to property and class relations (e.g. Anderson 1974).

As existing overviews have pointed out (Spruyt 2002), many of these war-making or economic explanations have focused on large-scale changes in the international environment in terms of military competition, trade, economic systems, and so on. Other studies have shifted the focus to more fine-grained analysis. For example, Spruyt (1994) explains how institutional competition, driven by both war-making and economic interests, led to the emergence of competing forms of organization and the eventual triumph of states. Bringing war-making and economic processes together has proved fruitful for studies of the institutional trajectory of specific states (e.g. Collins 1995), abstract analyses of the state as an institution (e.g. Wagner 2007), and a number of recent studies building on these traditions (e.g. Karaman and Pamuk 2013; Saylor and Wheeler 2017).

What has largely been left out of existing reviews and comparative analyses is the role of ideas and ideational change in the emergence of states, in spite of several traditions of research along these lines.³ An early example (Elias 1994 [1939]) argues that changes in state structure related to a broader social and ideational ‘civilizing process’. Other studies have posited state creation as a construction of culture as much as of institutions (Corrigan and Sayer 1985), or have focused on the political logics of particular religious ideas (Gorski 2003). In the history of political thought, research by Quentin Skinner (1978) and others traces the emergence of the concept of the state out of ideas in circulation during the European Renaissance and Reformation. This literature highlights when and how specific ideas appeared, ideas that form a part of the concept and practice of statehood today. It also reveals the difficulty of identifying the origins of the ‘modern’ state precisely, suggesting that we need to contextualize its evolution through more fine-grained studies of discourses and political practices.

Several challenges have emerged in these research programmes. First, the vast majority of research has focused on the European ‘medieval to modern transformation’. In addition to being problematically Eurocentric (see below), this elides the possibility that, even within Europe, the history of institutional change may not support the notion of a single transition from medieval complexity to modern state uniformity. Osiander (2007) notes that this model does not reflect the historical record of nearly constant institutional change and persistent complexity. Others have also identified specific institutional forms that were not simple ‘way stations’ on the road to modernity: the early-modern ‘conglomerate’ or ‘composite’ state, for example (Gustafsson 1998; Nexon 2009). This demonstrates that a more granular approach, one that sheds light on specific micropractices of political rule is crucial to trace the evolution of the ‘modern’ state.

Second, some studies have talked past each other because they actually explain different aspects of ‘the state’. Consider, for example, the enormously wide range of dates given for the emergence of the state. Studies from the history of political thought have found elements of the state in the Middle Ages (e.g. Strayer 1970), and similar arguments have emerged from other approaches (e.g. Blaydes and Paik 2016). Yet others have argued that ‘modern’ statehood only appears in the eighteenth century, or later (Osiander 2007). This disagreement is driven by the different outcomes actually being explained: the shift to more centralized authority (in medieval Europe) or the creation of society-penetrating institutions and bureaucracies (far later). Adjudicating between different explanations for ‘the state’ is impossible when those explanations are focused on fundamentally different outcomes.

Addressing this challenge requires greater specificity in what aspects of the state are being explained, or maybe avoiding the term altogether. Ferguson and Mansbach (1996), for instance, survey political organization and transformation over broad historical periods through the concept of a polity: any institution with a distinct identity, the capacity to mobilize people and resources, and some level of hierarchy. Or we could shift our focus to governance as a way to categorize different types of rule, including both states and other forms. The goal is not to discard state-based terminology altogether, but instead to recognize the obstacles it may pose to bridging different research traditions. Changing the level of granularity of research may also help, by studying the specific governance techniques of different forms of political organization across diverse settings.

Finally, a predominantly Eurocentric focus in state-formation literature persists, in spite of being repeatedly acknowledged. The empirical scope of influential early studies such as Tilly’s or Spruyt’s was not implicitly Eurocentric—those studies explicitly focused on the European case, without claiming that this single case was generalizable. This has given a particular cast to nearly all subsequent research, including a large body of work that has sought to apply those theories or concepts to non-European regions, asking if Tilly’s basic premise (that war made states) applies elsewhere, or drawing on other arguments built on European models (e.g. Herbst 2000; Centeno 2002; Kiser and Cai 2003; Matin 2007).

Much less common are efforts to turn the tables and ask what non-European models or influences shaped European state formation. This has become more prevalent in reference to sovereignty and territory (see next sections), but some scholars have pointed to the role of colonialism and imperialism in shaping a purportedly European development of statehood (e.g. Holsti 2004). Finally, more examples are also gradually emerging that look entirely outside of Europe—both for a causal model to apply and for an empirical target—particularly in terms of the trajectories of postcolonial states (e.g. Chong 2010). In the end, because the very concept of the state has been defined in reference to this one contextually specific form of political organization, the framing of questions regarding the state seem to have been almost inevitably Eurocentric.

The concept of sovereignty is challenging: acknowledged as central to international politics and its study but, at the same time, contested among practitioners as well as scholars. Since an exhaustive review is impossible, this section considers how sovereignty has conventionally been operationalized in IR; how History, IR, and related fields have approached ‘systemic change’ through the lens of sovereignty; and how the Eurocentrism of early work has been critiqued and amended.

For the rationalist tradition of IR, sovereignty has simply been assumed, if it is discussed at all—much like statehood. Sovereignty is the baseline concept for what distinguishes international from domestic politics: the presence of political units that do not recognize any higher authority over them. In other words, the sovereignty of states is the corollary to the anarchy of the ‘modern’ international system.

Yet there is a tradition of interrogating sovereignty, asking what defines sovereignty and if the concept varies across units, regions, or time. This includes a few key distinctions: internal versus external sovereignty, de jure versus de facto sovereignty, and juridical versus empirical sovereignty (Jackson 1999). This ‘sovereignty with adjectives’ approach has allowed for better descriptions of how political units are defined and related to one another. Some concepts overlap with the study of state formation (de facto or empirical sovereignty relates to state capacity), while other aspects are more system-facing (sovereignty as mutual recognition or as international legal equality).

Key interventions in IR include Barkin and Cronin’s (1994) emphasis on sovereignty as a variable rather than a constant, Thomson’s (1994) conceptualization of sovereignty as an institution defined by both constitutive and functional aspects, and Krasner’s (1999) differentiation between four dimensions of sovereignty. Krasner highlights the long history of strong states violating the sovereignty of weaker states, demonstrating that the notion of a ‘breakdown’ of sovereignty today imagines an era of untrammelled sovereignty that never existed. Yet this framework has been critiqued for being conceptually static, examining the violation of a set of fixed dimensions of sovereignty rather than interrogating their possible transformation (e.g. Biersteker 2002). Other IR scholarship has focused directly on transformation, especially in ideas, including examinations of sovereignty through genealogy and social construction (Bartelson 1995; Biersteker and Weber 1996), and by interrogating ideas about recognition and legitimacy (Holsti 2004; Bukovansky 2002). These studies shed light on sovereignty as a contested yet distinctively ‘modern’ concept that is deeply embedded in contemporary political practices and debates.

The challenge of examining sovereignty historically—especially when moving out of Europe’s recent past—is that the actors themselves did not use the term, and attempting to find cognate words can mask fundamental differences (Costa Lopez et al. 2018). This means that the search for ‘violations’ of sovereignty in eras when the concept did not exist can be problematic. Moreover, the concept of sovereignty as absolute non-intervention did not consolidate until recently, and sovereignty has always involved responsibilities as much as negative rights (Glanville 2014).

The emergence and transformation of sovereignty has been studied at different levels of granularity, including sovereignty as a systemic property, its manifestation in specific ideas and practices, and tracing sovereignty as a means of debunking the ‘myth’ of Westphalia.

One line of scholarship has investigated the evolution of sovereignty in terms of the international (or state) system and systemic change. Particularly for the juridical and external aspects of sovereignty like mutual recognition and legal equality, these are practices of the system as a whole, rather than of any individual state or unit. For example, foundational English School studies like Bull (1977) and Wight (1977) recognize the historical transformation of the international system, highlighting how system-wide features, including shared norms or identities, have emerged and changed over time. This explicitly avoids the assumption of a single, eternal form of international organization, but it has sometimes implied a teleological ‘evolution’ of the international system toward modern sovereignty.

Constructivist studies have focused on the ideas and practices that define the international system and thereby have challenged the assumption that politics has always been constituted by sovereign states interacting in anarchy. For example, Reus-Smit (1999) argues that that the state system is defined by a ‘constitutional structure’ of ideas; when those have changed the system has changed. Philpott (2001) traces the emergence of the modern concept of sovereignty, and thus the state system defined by that concept, to changes in ideas during the Reformation.⁴ Others have highlighted the role played by ideas about nationalism (Hall 1999), self-determination (Spruyt 2005), or individual rights (Reus-Smit 2013).

An important result has been a debunking of the ‘myth’ of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia as a seminal moment in the emergence of sovereignty and the modern state system. The texts of these treaties, the negotiations leading up to their signing, and the ideas and practices in which they were embedded all fail to evince any sign of ‘modern’ sovereignty, statehood, or the practices of the international system (Rosenberg 1994; Croxton 1999; Osiander 2001; Teschke 2003; Nexon 2009, chapter 8). While demonstrably false, this myth has continued to be deployed for disciplinary purposes, allowing scholars of post-1648 international politics to argue that they can ignore systemic change (De Carvalho et al. 2011).

Challenging Eurocentric interpretations of sovereignty and systemic change has taken various forms. Some studies have applied hypotheses or concepts from European narratives to other regions, but others have attempted to define their arguments or questions without reference to European models. Yet decentering Europe in the study of sovereignty or systemic change can be challenging when, again, the very concepts that define the inquiry emerged out of a specific European context.

One route has been to examine various forms of interaction among diverse political entities, without framing those interactions in terms of sovereignty. This could involve simply looking for ‘international systems’ or their analogues in different regions and eras, such as precolonial Africa (Warner 2001) or classical China (Zhang 2001). Hui’s (2005) comparison of early modern Europe with Warring States-era China demonstrates the contingency of principles seen as universal when only examined in the European context, such as balance of power.

The push against Eurocentric approaches has also involved looking not for analogues to the modern state system but instead for alternatives that functioned in fundamentally different ways, with diverse organizing ideas and practices. For example, Kang (2010) shows that the tribute system in East Asia involved stable hierarchical ordering, based on symbolic practices as much as on material power. Other studies have revealed similar variety in systemic organization in non-European contexts (e.g. Ringmar 2012; Mackay 2016; Pardesi 2017; Neumann and Wigen 2018). Phillips and Sharman (2015) demonstrate that the early modern Indian Ocean region exhibited a durable system of diverse, rather than uniform, interacting units.

Another move away from a Eurocentric approach has been to interrogate the conventional narrative that the modern system emerged entirely internal to Europe and then was imposed or imitated elsewhere. Colonialism and imperialism, in other words, have conventionally been either ignored or treated as processes whereby European powers decolonized and ‘admitted’ new states into the system upon independence (e.g. Bull and Watson 1984). Instead, critical IR scholarship has pointed out that the interaction of colonial and European spaces was essential to the emergence not only of global interconnectedness but also of sovereignty and the European state system itself (e.g. Keene 2002; Adelman 2006). Other studies have shifted the focus outside of Europe entirely, including finding patterns of colonial expansion and domination in other early modern regions, such as China or India (e.g. Hostetler 2001; Phillips 2014). Critical historians of international law have also emphasized the interaction between colonialism and the development of the modern international legal system, particularly in the expansion to the Americas (e.g. Anghie 2005; Benton 2009; Aalberts 2014; Becker Lorca 2014; Pitts 2018). By examining specific legal and political practices in non-European spaces, these studies also demonstrate the value of a more granular analytical approach.

Although the concept of territory is constantly deployed in IR discussions (territorial state, territorial sovereignty, territorial conflict, and so on), it is rarely defined and interrogated directly. What, then, is territory? It is not simply land, nor is it a feature of geography. Creating a territory is a political strategy of control, involving the delimitation of authority by spatial boundaries (Sack 1986). As Elden argues in his historical survey of the emergence of the concept, ‘the term territory became the way used to describe a particular and historically limited set of practices and ideas about the relation between place and power’ (2013, 6–7). In other words, territory is a specific form of spatial political control. This narrower conceptualization of territory ties the concept to modernity, but that is exactly Elden’s point: territory is a modern idea and practice, not something that has always existed in its current form.

Highlighting the uniquely modern nature of territory is useful, because it is one of the key elements that separates contemporary states and sovereignty from earlier forms of political organization. ‘Early states’ in ancient Mesopotamia, for example, exhibited centralized political authority (Scott 2017), but those ‘states’ did not take on the spatial form we are familiar with today. The territorial state is something distinct, and separating out and explaining that territorial element—as History and IR scholarship has increasingly done, particularly with studies of specific practices of territorialization—can yield a more fine-grained analysis of state formation and the emergence of political modernity.

During the post-1945 growth of IR as a discipline, territory was rarely examined directly. Agnew (1994) suggests that IR theory fell into a ‘territorial trap’, assuming that political rule has always been defined by the territorial exclusivity of modern state borders and thereby ignoring processes of globalization and fragmentation that have long existed (see also Taylor 1994). Constructivist studies later brought this concept back into focus, including Kratochwil’s (1986) discussion of boundaries and territoriality, and Ruggie’s (1993) push to explicitly interrogate the territorial nature of modern politics. Ruggie notes the contrasts among territorial rule defined by clear boundaries, non-spatial forms of rule over persons, and spatial claims that are not exclusive or fixed (i.e. nomadic movements). Other research has demonstrated that sovereignty in international politics is defined not only by recognition or legal equality but also by the territorial organization that power has taken (Murphy 1996; Caporaso 2000; Holsti 2004; Kahler and Walter 2006; Kadercan 2015). For many of these arguments, the essential point has been to show that today’s territorial structure of politics can potentially change, because territory and authority have not been fixed historically.

Building on these various traditions, studies have examined particular aspects of the history of territory. One line of inquiry has been into the territorialization of rule in early modern Europe, focusing on practices and institutions as well as on ideas. This has taken place in History (Sahlins 1989; Maier 2016), as well in historically focused IR, at diverse levels of granularity. Larkins (2010), for example, delineates the change in territoriality from medieval to early modern European political organization. Other studies have focused on the role of particular representational or governance tools, such as cartography, in both depicting and instantiating the territorial form of statehood (Biggs 1999; Strandsbjerg 2008; Branch 2014). Historical IR research has also sought to specify exactly how borders were made linear in practice, rather than simply in representations or in ideas (Goettlich 2019). These types of studies demonstrate that following the particular thread of territory can reveal different processes and chronologies of state formation and systemic change than those that are emphasized in studies focusing on centralization, bureaucratization, or extraction—examining the form that rule takes, in addition to its capacity or depth.

As with the study of the state and sovereignty, most of the early work on territory has focused, implicitly or explicitly, on European history. Territory is a more recent focus for IR, and the moves to expand beyond the European context are in some ways less extensive than with regard to the other two concepts. There is, again, the challenge of taking a concept that has been defined in terms of its particular trajectory in European history and applying it elsewhere. Nonetheless, studies have asked about the territorialization of political rule or identity in non-European settings (e.g. Thongchai 1994). Others have taken an approach similar to studies of colonialism and European sovereignty, noting how events and processes outside of Europe were integral to the emergence of territorial ideas and practices (e.g. Kayaoglu 2007; Branch 2012; Herzog 2015). Yet the exploration of non-European spatial-power relations and institutions is an area ripe for continuing study, one that scholarship in Global History—which investigates spatial alternatives and the production of space through transnational practices and connections—is well placed to address (Conrad 2016).

The rest of this chapter outlines four overarching critiques and avenues for future research: studying state, territory, and sovereignty as distinct yet interrelated outcomes and processes; overcoming the Eurocentric bias inherent in these concepts; addressing the twin problems of anachronism and generalizability; and focusing on the material manifestation of practices.

First, scholars need to identify more explicitly which of the three overlapping concepts—state, sovereignty, or territoriality—they are investigating, and how these concepts are connected in their research. There is significant but often unremarked variation in the historical evolution of each, but scholars are often unclear which they are explaining. As a result, studies speak past each other, for instance when an explanation of state centralization presents as its foil a study of the emergence of linear territorial boundaries. Such mistaken opposition overlooks the fact that changes in state, sovereignty, and territory may be subject to diverse causal dynamics. Of course, the three concepts are never completely discrete. Instead of conflating them, however, scholars should trace how they evolve and interact, including by rethinking the granularity of their research. For example, while earlier work in historical IR investigated broad changes leading to the evolution of the sovereign territorial state (e.g. Ruggie 1993; Spruyt 1994), more recent work has investigated territorialization, state formation, and sovereignty as distinct yet interrelated practices (e.g. Keene 2002).

One potentially useful framework for delineating diverse processes and outcomes while still noting their connections is the concept of an assemblage, constituted by diverse interwoven elements (e.g. Sassen 2006; Carroll 2006). Another useful route would be to focus on practices, especially in more fine-grained analysis. In addition to the growing literature on the ‘logic of practices’ in international politics (Adler and Pouliot 2011), there are long traditions of studying particular practices like diplomacy (e.g. Mattingly 1955; Der Derian 1987). This could suggest new interactions, such as those between the sovereign-equality-constituting practices of diplomacy and the territorializing practices of boundary making.

Second, more studies are needed that try to overcome the Eurocentric bias and framing of the most widely cited scholarship in historical IR. For many studies, Eurocentrism is not an implicit oversight but instead reflects a conscious choice about what to explain: a particular form of something (state, sovereignty, or territory) that is purported to have emerged in Europe. Other studies have focused on regions outside of Europe and, more recently, have asked questions that are not framed by the European example. Yet the field as a whole has been slow to move away from Europe as a case, as a foil, or as a source of hypotheses. Even when findings reveal the importance of non-European dynamics, they are sometimes ignored or not incorporated into the broader discussion. Moreover, as Bilgin (2008) points out, recognizing and addressing Eurocentrism is not just about looking ‘outside the West’ for cases but also about asking questions and applying concepts that are not framed by Western history (and contemporary readings of it). This does not mean, however, that scholarship should drop European concepts and framings entirely. Concepts like the state, sovereignty, and territory not only constitute the ‘modern’ international system; they also speak to broader theoretical debates. Thus, historical scholarship should develop alternative vocabularies, but in conversation with these core concepts.

One promising approach is to draw on a growing body of research in History and related fields on the ‘global early modern’ (see the chapters on ‘Global sources of international thought’ and ‘early modernity’ in this volume). For example, Hostetler (2001) looks at early modern Qing China and sees processes of expansion, territorialization, and colonialism that parallel what some contemporary European polities were doing. The importance of connections between world regions during this period could also be highlighted (e.g. Neumann and Wigen 2018). Thus, instead of asking if specific theories of European state formation or systemic change ‘apply’ to other regions, we can consider how the increasing interactions between regions during this period shaped global politics, including the development of states, sovereignty, and territory—both within Europe and outside of it. This includes investigations of imperial and colonial settings, which highlight the fragmented and often de-territorialized nature of sovereign political authority outside of Europe (Armitage 2004; Benton 2009; Burbank and Cooper 2010; Stern 2011; Phillips and Sharman 2015).

Another route to address Eurocentrism is to build on a tradition of looking outside of Europe for the origins of modern (and supposedly European) political ideas, institutions, and practices. Focusing on the expansion to the Americas as constitutive of modernity is one example (Mignolo 1995), as is Hobson’s (2004) research on the explicitly non-European roots of political modernity. The recent emphasis on the nineteenth century as an important period of systemic transformation can also be framed in global, rather than European, terms (Buzan and Lawson 2015; Osterhammel 2014). Indeed, historians often study local events and processes in the context of global flows and transformations (Conrad 2017). Drawing on this approach, however, requires a shift in granularity. Instead of only producing macro-level studies of global transformations, IR scholarship also needs to study their local effects and implications.

IR scholars should also draw directly on work by non-Western scholars and investigate how their views and perspective pertain to modern conceptions of the state, sovereignty, and territory (e.g. Shilliam 2010; see also this volume’s chapter on ‘Global Sources of International Thought’). For example, Sakar (1919, 400) argued that ‘The conception of “external” sovereignty was well established in the Hindu philosophy of the state’. This might reveal similarities between European and non-European political practices, and that Europe’s historical experience was less exceptional than IR scholarship suggests. Including thinkers from outside of Europe into historical IR scholarship would also contribute to globalizing IR and would, in the words of Acharya and Buzan (2019, 6), ‘open a debate … about how and why it needs to make the transition from being mainly West—and indeed Anglosphere—centric, to being truly global’.

Third, historical scholarship needs to address the twin problems of anachronism and generalizability: the possible inapplicability of contemporary concepts to earlier historical periods and the challenge of drawing lessons from history for contemporary politics. In contrast to the first wave of historical IR scholarship, recent studies have begun to focus less on generating implications for today. Although forcing all historical scholarship to speak to contemporary politics can be unhelpful, it is useful to continue to seek appropriate generalizable findings while avoiding anachronism. And addressing this problem, in turn, has important implications for the granularity of historical research. One potential route to avoid anachronism is to hew as closely as possible to the language and concepts of the time in question. This approach makes comparison between cases difficult, but it still allows scholars to explain important historical processes and events. Another route, one that prioritizes generalizability, is to focus on mechanisms that are general enough that they avoid being anachronistic. Nexon’s (2009) study of early modern Europe, for example, explicitly proposes and tests mechanisms that rely on broad analytical concepts and categories, rather than more historically contingent ideas such as sovereignty, statehood, or anarchy.

Finally, a promising new area of inquiry is the materiality of states, sovereignty, and territory. The causal factors and mechanisms explored in the literature reviewed previously vary widely, ranging from material-focused studies of war-making and trade to ideas-focused explanations emphasizing conceptual changes. In most cases, however, the outcome being explained is largely about ideas, practices, and institutions: the state as an institution, sovereignty as a set of concepts and practices, and territoriality as a collection of spatial ideas and strategies. Yet these conceptual outcomes also have important though largely unexplored material corollaries: for example, material instantiations of state capacity, physical means of diplomatic exchange and recognition, and the tangible effects of territorialization in border construction and maintenance. Modernity itself rests on the material foundation of technologies and infrastructures as much as on ideas.

Materiality has never really been absent from these discussions, but more cross-disciplinary conversations between IR and fields like Science and Technology Studies (STS) would be productive. Carroll’s (2006) study of state formation, for example, considers the importance of material culture and sociotechnical systems for the state, not just as a driver of centralization but as a part of what defines a state as centralized and bureaucratic. Other studies, particularly from History and STS, have engaged with different sociotechnical and material elements (Guldi 2012; Mukerji 2010). Territory also lends itself to this type of analysis, given that modern territoriality involves not only ideas and practices but also material representations (maps) and infrastructures (demarcated borders). Focusing on materiality also generates new insights into how state, sovereignty, and territory intersect in day-to-day practices.

Assessing the current discussion of the state, sovereignty, and territory, a lot has been accomplished since the last direct review of these concepts by Biersteker in 2002. Studies have proposed new categories of explanation for state formation and systemic change, increased the focus on the territorial aspect of modernity, and begun drawing more—and more deeply—on non-European histories. Yet there is still much to be done. The Eurocentric conception of modernity and the emphasis on European cases, concepts, and causal processes demands further correction. Exploring diverse levels of granularity also remains a challenge, especially bridging broad theories and historical narratives to specific processes, mechanisms, and cases. One does not have to privilege microfoundations to see that many of these debates could use an injection of more fine-grained analysis.