By Ds.Emily Lange

Publishers: Institut für Sozialstrategy & PIRON Global Development

Abstract

How would we tell the story of the last 500 years of international politics in the Western world? Most of us would struggle to tell the story of the last five years, let alone the last five hundred. But history matters to the shaping of identities, to our self-understanding, and holds important keys to understanding what we are seeing unravel today.

The Deeper Revolution resists modern preferences for soundbites and executive summaries and invites the reader to take a long journey through the political history of the Western world. Our tour guide is historian and international theorist Martin Wight, who when looking at the last five hundred years of the Western states-system, identified three waves of international revolution which profoundly shaped our politics and society: the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution – three historic moments he named “doctrinal conflagrations,” where revolutionary ideas, ideologies, philosophies, programs and belief systems came into violent clash, led to tremendous brutality and destruction, and ultimately reshaped political systems and societies.

Looking anew at these waves of revolution, this book claims that behind the visible forces of political might and change lie deep forces within belief systems and ideologies, which shape worldviews and make up a deeper revolution. While religion and faith have often been downplayed in secularised narratives of the international history of the West, this book argues for the inclusion of intangibles and belief systems to fully grasp these historic turning points and better approach our own times.

A journey through Western political history can help each reader take a step back from our current complexity, recognise familiar ideological overtones in past movements, learn from other societies who faced prodigious challenges, and reflect on how the way we see the world shapes our political and individual aspirations, our societal designs, our faith and our actions.

Author Bio

Dr. Emily Lange holds a PhD in Human Geography and in International Relations. As a contemplative scholar, her work and writing are a journey of learning to reflect and lead others into deep reflection. Having grown up in rural Portugal, she now lives in Bonn, Germany, working for the greater good of societies at PIRON Global Development. If you are looking for her and haven’t found her in the nearest library, she’s probably sharing her latest ideas with her friends over a coffee/beer.

www.emilylange.me

Excerpt from the Foreword by Prof. Dr. Daniel Philpott (University of Notre Dame)

The Deeper Revolution is characterized by a “big think” that has become rare in the past few years of international relations scholarship. Lange understands that behind what we think are the forces that matter in international politics is a view of the forces that have mattered in international politics – over the longue durée. She wants to look anew at history and make an argument about what matters. She ventures that ideas matter – ideologies, philosophies, programs – and that they operate relatively independently from material causes. More so, she thinks that religion matters…

Lange is careful, rigorous, and precise in her method, but sweeping, bold and monumental in her claims: big think. The Deeper Revolution is a book that every international relations scholar ought to read. It is also a book for a wider audience… intended for any interested reader of our current times, inviting us to take a step back, explore the political history of the West and come back to the present by considering a revolution that comes from worldviews, which shape, as they have always shaped, international politics.