Book Launch: Beyond Liberal Order

Authors in the new edited collection Beyond Liberal Order: States, Societies and Markets in the Global Indian Ocean (Hurst, 2021) will speak on their research in Asia. Dr. Harry Verhoeven (a co-editor of the volume) will introduce the volume, with presentations by Prof. Rana Mitter (University of Oxford) and Prof. Shandana Khan Mohmand (Institute for Development Studies). This discussion will be chaired by Baiquni, a UNC graduate student in the Department of History, working on pan-Asian and pan-Indian Ocean connections in the 20th century.

What does liberal order actually amount to outside the West, where it has been most institutionalized? Contrary to the Atlantic or Pacific, liberal hegemony is thin in the Indian Ocean World; there are no equivalents of NATO, the EU or the US-Japan defense relationship.

Yet what this book calls the ‘Global Indian Ocean’ was the beating heart of earlier epochs of globalization, where experiments in international order, market integration and cosmopolitanisms were pioneered. Moreover, it is in this macro-region that today’s challenges will face their defining hour: climate change, pandemics, and the geopolitical contest pitting China and Pakistan against the USA and India. The Global Indian Ocean states represent the greatest range of political systems and ideologies in any region, from Hindu-nationalist India and nascent democracy in Indonesia and South Africa, to the Gulf’s mixture of tribal monarchy and high modernism.

These essays by leading scholars examine key aspects of political order, and their roots in the colonial and pre-colonial past, through the lenses of state-building, nationalism, international security, religious identity and economic development. The emergent lessons are of great importance for the world, as the ‘global’ liberal order fades and new alternatives struggle to be born.

This event is free and open to the public, and will be held virtually over Zoom. Register to attend by clicking this link.