Governing the world – an interview with Mark Mazower

‘People begin to feel that… there are bonds of international duty binding all the nations of the earth together.’

This quotation, which resonates so clearly as yet more blood is shed in Syria, belongs to Guiseppe Mazzini, the 19th century Italian nationalist whose vision of a ‘Holy Alliance of peoples’ underscores much of Professor Mark Mazower’s Governing the World: The History of an Idea.

Mazower’s book is an account of the ideas and institutions of international relations from the Concert of Vienna in 1814 to the present day United Nations. It is, then, the story of how Western hegemony has shaped the international sphere; this period of hegemony is soon to end and perhaps Mazzini’s international ambitions will die with it. In this sense, Mazower’s engrossing survey prompts questions about the nation state in an unsettled global future.

It is becoming fashionable, perhaps, to assume that a strong state is one that is independent of (but not necessarily isolated from) international bodies.