What comes after American hegemony? In this book, Acharya and Pardesi compare the interplay of power and ideas in the ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to explain why the two regions took divergent paths to peace and stability. They also discuss its lessons for international order today. While the ancient Mediterranean order was shaped by the hegemony of Rome, the Indian Ocean developed an open and inclusive international order without the dominance of any single power. Moreover, the Indian Ocean provides a more robust example of the peaceful spread of ideas and culture than the ancient Mediterranean where Hellenization or the spread of Greek ideas was often accompanied by violence and imperialism. Applying the divergent experiences of the two regions, the book argues that the history the Indian Ocean before European colonization offers a more useful framework for reshaping world order as the US- and Western- dominated Liberal International Order comes to an end. The Indian Ocean framework points to an alternative model of order building, a multiplex rather than a multipolar approach, that could sustain efforts to build peace and stability in the emerging Indo-Pacific region.
Book: Amitav Acharya and Manjeet S. Pardesi, Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300214987/divergent-worlds

Manjeet S. Pardesi is Associate Professor of International Relations in the Political Science and International Relations Programme and Asia Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His research focuses on global orders and global history, great power politics, Asian security, and the Sino-Indian rivalry.
His most recent book, Divergent Worlds: What the Ancient Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Can Tell Us About the Future of International Order (co-authored with Amitav Acharya), was published by Yale University Press in 2025 and received the 2026 T. V. Paul Book Prize from the International Studies Association. A Chinese-language edition is expected in 2026. He is also co-author of The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order (with Sumit Ganguly and William R. Thompson, Cambridge University Press, 2023).
His work has appeared in journals such as European Journal of International Relations, Security Studies, Survival, and Global Studies Quarterly, as well as in edited volumes.
He received his PhD in Political Science from Indiana University, Bloomington. He holds an MSc in Strategic Studies from the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (now the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a BEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Nanyang Technological University.