What is Hedley Bull's Neomedievalism and Why Does It Matter Today?

A historical prediction from 1977 that now reads like today's news feed. Hedley Bull's neomedievalism was never a nostalgia trip; it was a warning about the fragility of the modern state.

Close your eyes and imagine the map of the world. Each country a clean shape, filled with a single color, bordered by a firm line. That image is a lie. It was always a lie—but it was a convenient one. For three centuries, the Westphalian system gave us the illusion of order: one state, one territory, one loyalty. Hedley Bull, an Australian international relations theorist, saw through this illusion in his book The Anarchical Society (1977). He argued that the modern state was not the end of history but a passing phase, and that global politics were drifting back toward a structure he called the 'new Medievalism'.

How Bull Defined Neomedievalism

Bull did not predict a literal return to feudal castles and serfdom. Rather, he observed that the defining feature of medieval Europe was the absence of a single, supreme authority. Power was shared among kings, popes, emperors, guilds, and local lords. Allegiances were layered; a person could owe fealty to multiple masters simultaneously. Bull saw a parallel in the global politics of the late twentieth century: the state, once the undisputed center of political life, was beginning to share the stage with transnational corporations, international organizations, religious movements, and regional identities. He called this emerging order neomedievalism.

Two decades into the twenty-first century, Bull's prediction feels less like a thought experiment and more like a description of your browser's tab history: you answer to a central government, but also to the algorithm that feeds you, the employer that pays you, and the global movement that demands your outrage. The clean lines of the atlas were never designed for this complexity.

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Why It Matters for Ordinary Life

Neomedievalism is not an abstract geopolitical theory. It shows up in the way you juggle a national passport with a borderless digital identity, in the way a multinational corporation can outspend a small state, in the way online communities form their own rules and enforce them with platform bans. Bull understood that the state's monopoly on allegiance was already cracking in the 1970s. Today, we feel the tremors in every election, every supply-chain crisis, every protest that scales across continents overnight.

• Loyalty stacking: You support a nation, a brand, a sports team, and a social justice cause—often with conflicting priorities.
• Fractional sovereignty: The state controls your physical borders but not your data, not your encrypted currency, not your attention.
• Non-state power: Tech platforms, religious networks, and criminal syndicates operate with a level of authority that transcends borders.

Navigating this neomedieval labyrinth requires a new mental atlas. Bull's early work offers no nostalgia for empire or feudalism, but it does give us a vocabulary for the present disorientation. To live in the neomedieval world is to accept that power has never been monolithic—and to learn to negotiate with many masters at once.

Referenced Works & Texts

1. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Chapter 9, 'The Future of the States System' (1977). The foundational text introducing the concept of neomedievalism.
2. Barry Buzan, People, States & Fear, Chapter 8 (1983). Extended Bull's analysis of overlapping security communities.

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