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Geopolitics, social forces, and the international: Revisiting the ‘Eastern Question’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2015

Cemal Burak Tansel
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Abstract

This article contributes to current debates in materialist geopolitics and contemporary IR theorising by restating the centrality of social forces for conceptualising geopolitics. It does so by offering a detailed conceptual reading of the corpus of the ‘Eastern Question’, which is composed of a series of political analyses written by Marx and Engels in the period of 1853–6. This archive presents unique analytical and conceptual insights beyond the immediate temporal scope of the issue. I unpack this argument in three movements. The article (i) offers an overview of the debates on materialist geopolitics; (ii) contextualises the historical setting of the ‘Eastern Question’ and critically evaluates the great powers’ commitment to the European status quo; and (iii) constructs an original engagement with a largely overlooked corpus to reveal the ways in which Marx and Engels demonstrated the interwoven relationship between domestic class interests, the state, and the international system. I maintain that revisiting the ‘Eastern Question’ corpus (i) bolsters the existing materialist frameworks by underscoring the role of class as an analytical category; (ii) challenges an important historical pillar of the balance of power argument; and (iii) empirically strengthens the burgeoning scholarship in international historical sociology.

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Articles
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Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , July 2016 , pp. 492 - 512
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Historical Materialism Annual Conference (London, November 2013), the International Studies Association Annual Conference (Toronto, March 2014), and the 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations (Giardini Naxos, September 2015). For their helpful comments and suggestions, I would like to thank Andreas Bieler, Ian Bruff, Katja Daniels, Adam David Morton, Jeppe Strandsbjerg, Sébastien Rioux, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Review of International Studies.

References

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88 There is no doubt that the ‘Eastern Question’ interventions of Marx and Engels are constructed from a European perspective. Nevertheless, the empirical focus on Europe is always accompanied by a universal sensitivity to the prospects of revolution beyond Europe, thus any attempt at unpacking the archive’s Eurocentrism has to carefully evaluate its position within the broader corpus of Marx and Engels. I have explored these questions in more detail in Tansel, ‘Deafening silence?’ and Tansel, Cemal Burak, ‘Breaking the Eurocentric cage’, Capital & Class, 37:2 (2013), pp. 299–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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107 MECW 12, p. 537.

108 MECW 12, p. 19.

109 See, for example, leader of The Times dated 8 July 1953 which contains the following statement: ‘as the Russians could not master their propensity for civilizing barbarian provinces, England had better let them do as they desired, and avoid a disturbance of the peace by vain obstinacy’ (quoted in MECW 12, p. 185).

110 MECW 12, p. 113, emphasis in original.

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