Hendrik Spruyt argues that there was nothing inevitable about the rise of the state system, however.

In Ending Empire, Hendrik Spruyt argues that the answer lies in the domestic institutional structures of the central governments.

Time and space have contracted. This text takes the change in our horizons as a key feature of modern international relations, examining how international politics and the relations between nations and states have become global politics.

Spruyt takes an inter-disciplinary approach to explain how collective belief systems organized three non-European societies c.1500-1900, and how these polities engaged the European colonial powers.

This book makes a significant contribution to the literature. I learned a great deal from Contracting States."--Katja Weber, Georgia Institute of Technology