What determines whether states and other polities survive and thrive or whither and die? Just as individuals’ life prospects within a given society are determined by a variety of factors (e.g.race, class), so are polities’ prospects within international society (sometimes also referred to as the society of states). This course is an attempt to analyse how those determining factors have changed over the last five hundred years. The end goal is to shed light on the specificity of contemporary international society. The course is divided in three parts. The first deals with preliminary conceptual questions, using Max Weber’s sociological notion of ‘life chances’ as a starting point. The second part of the course focuses on the early modern period, around which so many theories of world politics emphasising the importance of war and military force are built. By contrast, the course seeks to tone down the role of these factors. The third section examines the period from the French Revolution to the present and is particularly concerned with understanding why a large number of previously independent polities were literally extinguished during that timeframe. Readings for this course will draw on scholarship in a variety of disciplines, including work by Charles Alexandrowicz, Lauren Benton, Tanisha Fazal, Mamadou Hébié, Edward Keene, and Jason Sharman.