A philosophical and historical analysis of the idea of world community from the late Middle Ages to the present.

Jens Bartelson is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at Lund University. He is the author of The Critique of the State (Cambridge, 2001) and A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge, 1995).

1. A conceptual history of world community; 2. Paradoxes of world community; 3. In the beginning was the world; 4. Nationalizing community; 5. Reinventing mankind; 6. Globalizing community; 7. Community unbound?