International transformation and the persistence of territoriality: toward a new political geography of capitalism

Abstract

Starting from the premise that the proper foundation for the historicisation of international systems lies in the delineation of the prevailing social property relations of an epoch, my paper seeks to conceptualise the international relations of capitalist modernity. This endeavour, however, runs into problems when no conceptual basis in capitalist social relations can be spelled out that would specify clearly why capitalism needs an interstate system. Turning to history, I find that the emergence of territorial statehood in fact preceded the rise of capitalism. This then leads me to ask in what way the transition to capitalism in the 19th century transformed the content of international relations - but also, conversely, what the reproduction of the territorial form in this transition means for the development of capitalist societies. Finally, I will ask whether the current process of globalisation entails the restructuring of political space in line with the inherently global nature of capital. Has capitalism, in other words, 'worked its way through' to the international system and finally, after a 200-year long transitional period, subsumed 'the international' under its own global logic?