"This book re-evaluates the concept of anarchy in International Relations by drawing on anarchist thought. It is the first scholarly work to draw on historical anarchism to construct an international theory premised on the idea of states as anarchists. It puts forward a constructivist account of state behavior, termed 'polite anarchy', to theorize diplomacy, an area of IR which is increasingly recognized within the discipline as being under-theorized, by drawing on a contextual historical study of the idiom of politeness in the anarchist thought of the late-Enlightenment British radical, William Godwin, generally considered to be the founder of modern philosophical anarchism. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students of International Relations, the history of political thought, international political theory and anarchism, as well as historians and practitioners in the field of diplomacy and Godwin scholars"--