Guest Editors' Introduction

Abstract

In Huntington’s formulation, civilizations are primarily religious. For him, though, the clash of civilizations takes place between sovereign entities. In this light, the end of the European religious war in the Treaty of Westphalia, that substituted sovereign nations for the Church, profoundly shaped the contemporary international relations and global governance. Thus, the subsequent expansion of the European order through colonialism encountered multiple worlds that were embedded in various different cosmological imaginations. These strangers mingled after this continuous process initiated by such expansion. Even so, invaders and defenders have entrenched a self-other, believer-alien, or West-East binary in the mind of the ensuing generations to save the ostensibly pure beliefs of each.