This book asks whether sovereignty can guarantee international equality by exploring the discourses of sovereignty and their reliance on the notions of civilisation and savagery in two historical colonial encounters: the French explorations of Canada in the 16th century and the domestic troubles linked to the Wars of Religion.

Xavier Mathieu is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on Sovereignty, International Interventions (the Responsibility to Protect, Peacebuilding), Civilisation and Eurocentrism, and Identity/Difference in International Encounters. He has published articles on these topics in International Relations, Third World Quarterly, the Journal of International Political Theory, the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, and Global Responsibility to Protect. He has also co-edited (with Pol Bargues-Pédreny) The Politics of Peacebuilding in a Diverse World (Routledge, 2019).

Introduction Chapter 1: Revealing 'civilised sovereignty': The myth of sovereignty as equality and the maintenance of Eurocentrism in IR Chapter 2: Sovereignty as a performative concept Chapter 3: The writing of the ideal sovereign state: French theorists and civilised sovereignty Chapter 4: Sovereign doubts: Civilisation and savagery disrupt the colonial frontiers Chapter 5: (Re-)establishing the sovereign, creating a familiar - but inferior - Other Chapter 6: Naturalising the sovereign/colonial frontiers: The interplay between internal and external civilised identities Conclusion