Andrew Phillips is a Research Fellow in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. His research interests focus on the evolution of the global state system and the challenges that new security threats pose to the contemporary world order.

• Introduction; 1. What are international orders?; 2. Accounting for the transformation of international orders; 3. The origins, constitution and decay of Latin Christendom; 4. The collapse of Latin Christendom; 5. Anarchy without society: Europe after Christendom and before sovereignty; 6. The origins, constitution and decay of the sinosphere; 7. Heavenly kingdom, imperial nemesis: barbarians, martyrs and the collapse of the sinosphere; 8. Into the abyss: civilization, barbarism and the end of the sinosphere; 9. The great disorder and the birth of the East Asian sovereign state system; 10. The Jihadist terrorist challenge to the global state system; Conclusion.

'This extraordinary conceptual and historical analysis of changes in international orders analyzes the threats that Islamist radicalism and transnational terrorism pose for the present American-centered order through two historical lenses: the collapse of Latin Christendom under the impact of the Reformation and a revolution in war fighting, and the liquidation of the Sinosphere brought about by dynastic decay, millenarian rebellions, and the encroachment of Western imperial expansion. Phillips is theoretically bold and incisive and succeeds in escaping the Western-centric perspective that typifies most contemporary international relations theory. If the second-hands of history, our daily news and pundits, are condemned to tell the wrong time, here is a book for the ages that comes as close to getting things right as is humanly possible. This is a triumph of superior scholarship.' Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University