This introduction to contemporary politics examines the historical construction of the modern territorial state. Rejecting models of linear development, the authors fuse accounts of governing practices, technological change, political economy, language and culture into a narrative of the formation of specific state forms. The modern territorial state appears not as necessary or inevitable, but as the contingent achievement of specific, historically situated political actions and agendas. Cases of state formation in England, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Iraq, the Republic of Congo, and Japan enrich the discussion, which ranges from ancient Rome to the present. The final chapters of the book address the consequences and future of the modern state's ability to maintain order and to rule subject populations, in a world in which state sovereignty is increasingly loosened from its territorial moorings.