Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power - Paperback

by Manjari Chatterjee Miller (Author)

What are rising powers? Do they challenge the international order? Why do some countries but not others become rising powers? In Why Nations Rise, Manjari Chaterjee Miller answers these questions and shows that some countries rise not just because they develop the military and economic power to do so but because they develop particular narratives about how to become a great power in the style of the great power du jour. These active rising powers accept the prevalent norms of the international order in order to become great powers. On the other hand, countries which have military and economic power but not these narratives do not rise enough to become great powers--they stay reticent powers. An examination of the narratives in historical (the United States, the Netherlands, Meiji Japan) and contemporary (Cold War Japan, post-Cold War China and India) cases, Why Nations Rise shows patterns of active and reticent rising powers and presents lessons for how to understand the rising
powers of China and India today.

Author Biography

Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, and a Research Associate at the School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. She is the author of Wronged by Empire: Post-Imperial Ideology and Foreign Policy in India and China, and the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook on China-India Relations.