Non-Western thought and international relations / Robbie Shilliam -- The perilous but unavoidable intellectual terrain of the "non-West" / Robbie Shilliam -- Colonial conditions. On colonial modernity : Civilization versus nationhood in Cuba, c.1840 / Gerard Aching -- Anti-racism and emancipation in the thought and practice of Cabral, Neto, Mondlane and Machel / Branwen Gruffyd Jones / Voices from the "Jewish Colony" : sovereignty power, secularization and the outside within / Willi Goetschel -- Cultural contexts. International relations of modernity in Sayyid Qutb's thoughts on sovereignty : The notion of democratic participation in the Islamic canon / Saye Khatab -- Decoding political Islam : uneven and combined Ali Shariati's political thought / Kamran Matin Beyond orientalism and "reverse orientalism" : through the looking glass of Japanese humanism / Ryoko Nakano / Culture in contemporary IR theory : the Chinese provocation / Arif Dirlik -- Beyond the nation-state. Alternative sources of cosmopolitanism : nationalism, universalism and Créolité in Francophone Caribbean thought / Martin Munro and Robbie Shilliam -- The internationalist nationalist : pursuing an ethical modernity with Jawaharlal Nehru / Priya Chacko -- Radical anti-colonial thought, anti-colonial Internationalism and the politics of human solidarities / Anthony Bogues Reflections -- Reflections. Untimely reflections / Mustapha Pasha -- Working on non-Western perspectives in both theory and practice : an interview with Christopher LaMonica.

International relations, as a discipline, tends to focus upon European and Western canons of modern social and political thought. Alternatively, this book explores the global imperial and colonial context within which knowledge of modernity has been developed. The chapters sketch out the historical depth and contemporary significance of non-Western thought on modernity, as well as the rich diversity of its individuals, groups, movements and traditions. The contributors theoretically and substantively engage with non-Western thought in ways that refuse to render it exotic to, superfluous to or derivative of the orthodox Western canon of social and political thought. Taken as a whole, the book provides deep insights into the contested nature of a global modernity shaped so fundamentally by Western colonialism and imperialism. Now, as ever, these insights are desperately needed for a discipline that is so closely implicated in Western foreign policy making and yet retains such a myopic horizon of inquiry.