Modern uluslararası sistemin başlangıç noktası hakkındaki tartışmalar

Although there is a widespread conventional wisdom that the modern international system of territorial, equal, independent and sovereign states has emerged with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, some revisionist perspectives reject to take this pre-acceptance as given and bring about alternative outlooks. So many scholars from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds defy this commonsense that it becomes really difficult to understand the prevalence of the Westphalian myth in main international relations textbooks. In order to understand the meaning of this persistence, I will try to make a textual discourse analysis and demonstrate the construction and deconstruction of the Westphalian narrative first. And then I will present several reconstruction attempts that try to come up with a less Eurocentric history of international relations. As a conclusion, this analysis shows that mainstream international relations scholarship is Eurocentric, imperialistic, presentist, conservative, parochial and exclusionary. And as long as next generation international relations scholars, experts, statesmen and diplomats are educated through these conventional textbooks, which do not sufficiently represent the critical perspectives; that will not be so easy to make a positive change in the development of international relations scholarship and reinterpret the world for a better future.