Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy

"Race War and the Global Imaginary, 1800-Present explores the historical connections between race and violence from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. Barder shows how beginning with the Haitian Revolution and nineteenth century settler colonialism the development of the very idea of global order was based on racial hierarchy. The intensification of racial violence happened when the global racial hierarchy appeared to be in crisis. By the first half of the twentieth century, ideas about race war come to fuse themselves with state genocidal projects to eliminate internal and external enemy races. Global processes of racialization did not end with the Second World War and with the discrediting of scientific racism, the decolonization of the global South and the expansion of the state-system to newly independent states; rather it continued in different forms as the racialization of cultural or civilizational attributes that then resulted in further racial violence. From fears about the "Yellow Peril", the "Clash of Civilization" or, more recently, the "Great Replacement", the global imaginary is constituted by ideas about racial difference. Examining global politics in terms of race and racial violence reveals a different spatial topology across domestic and global politics. Global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities. The waning of a white world order translates into racial retrenchment and violence at home. In Killing Them All Barder revisits two centuries of international history to show the important consequences of a global racial imaginary that continues to reverberate across time and space"--
International Relations theory assumes that the struggle for power is not only ahistorical but that international politics is necessarily the realm of a perpetual struggle for power between states. However, by looking beyond the state, the study of global politics may itself reveal theimportance of alternative imaginaries just as historically salient as that of the state system. In particular, this book argues that a specific racial imaginary has, over the past two centuries, cut across politically defined state boundaries to legitimate practices of genocidal violence againstso-called "enemy races."In Global Race War, Alexander D. Barder shows how the very idea of global order was based on racial hierarchy and difference. Barder traces the emergence of this global racial hierarchy from the early 19th century to the present to explain how a historical racial global order unraveled over thefirst half of the 20th century, continued during the Cold War, and reemerged during the Global War on Terror. As Barder shows, imperial, racial, and geopolitical orders intersected over time in ways that violently tore apart the imperial and sovereign state system and continue to haunt politicstoday.Examining global politics in terms of race and racial violence reveals a different spatial topology across domestic and global politics. Moreover, global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities.Global Race War revisits two centuries of international history to show the important consequences of a global racial imaginary that continues to reverberate across time and space.