The origins and antecedents of modern international politics would take one far back into a dim and remote age in the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. There, after centuries of recurrent disorder and fighting, one political community, Rome, emerged triumphant over all rivals. Then for a brief period, dating from about the beginning of the Christian era, Roman administrators and soldiers imposed on the Mediterranean and West European peoples a regime of public order which came to be known as the Pax Romana , the Roman Peace.
Gradually but inexorably this system of public order went to pieces. Historians have attributed the collapse of Roman power to various causes which need not concern us at this point. As the temporal power of the Caesars deteriorated, the spiritual authority of the Christian Church of Rome expanded and grew stronger. But the Papacy lacked the physical resources that would have been required to preserve the Pax Romana . The Empire disintegrated into fragments. The ideal of a politically unified world was lost--but not quite completely.
Many of the European fragments of the Roman Empire gradually coalesced into political communities of a somewhat different kind. These eventually came to be called nation-states, national states, nations, states. The rulers, or "sovereigns," of these European national communities were linked together loosely by two sorts of bonds: kinship through intermarriage, and formal adherence to the Christian faith. These bonds did not prevent recurrent wars, which became more destructive with the development of cannon, small arms, and other advances in military technology. But kinship and the religious heritage did provide a basis for a rudimentary international order identified by such labels as the Family of Nations and Christendom.
In due course, this so-called Family of Nations became known also as the Society of Nations, and in more recent times as the International Community...............
