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The English School’s Histories and International Relations

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Historiographical Investigations in International Relations

Part of the book series: The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought ((PMHIT))

Abstract

Ian Hall’s chapter on the English school explores an important episode in the development of international relations (IR) theory in the English-speaking worlds, one that showcases the importance of history as the disciplinary matrix for the English School of International Relations. In Britain, Hall argues, IR “bore some of the scars of earlier debates” in the field of history, and in particular those resulting from the multi-pronged reaction against the crisis of progressive visions of history (or the “Whig” conception of history, as it would be popularized by Herbert Butterfield). Hall distinguishes three reactions to the post-First World War unraveling of what he calls “developmental historicism”: a more radical historicism, represented by Collingwood and Oakeshott; a modernist response open to the social sciences and eventually ending in some form of social history; and the synthesis between the previous two attempted by Butterfield, which would define the historiographical profile of the English school, and be taken in different directions by Hedley Bull and Martin Wight.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Some argue “IR” was born as a separate discipline in 1919, with the foundation of the Woodrow Wilson Chair at what was then the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth (now Aberystwyth University). But conventional accounts of the emergence of disciplines emphasize their emergence is normally signaled by a professional association, recognized journals, and set of agreed core postulates about the field. Moreover, of the five men who occupied that Wilson Chair from 1919 until 1964, three were historians or had been trained as historians: Charles Webster , E. H. Carr , and Philip Reynolds. The first Professor, A. E. Zimmern, was a distinguished classicist.

  2. 2.

    Their work appeared in books, of course, but also in key British journals like Chatham House’s International Affairs (founded as in 1922) and International Relations (founded in 1960), but also American journals like Foreign Affairs.

  3. 3.

    See especially Collini et al. 1983.

  4. 4.

    On Collingwood , see especially Inglis 2009, and on Oakeshott , see Franco 2004.

  5. 5.

    On this idea, see especially Graham 1997.

  6. 6.

    On the rise of the historical profession and the centrality of the “objectivity question,” see Novick 1988.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Tawney 1926.

  8. 8.

    While secular history had no shape, it was clear to Butterfield that sacred history did—see Butterfield 1949a, especially 93–129.

  9. 9.

    Butterfield published on “History and the Marxian Method ” in Scrutiny (Butterfield 1932–1933). See also the essay on “Marxist History” in History and Human Relations (1951a).

  10. 10.

    A diplomatic historian, Headlam-Morley occupied the Montague Burton Chair from 1948 to 1970, during which time she obstructed efforts to teach any of the new literature in IR that appeared in the postwar years. The Oxford MPhil in International Relations was created only after she retired (Hall 2012a, b, 10).

  11. 11.

    Some of Wight’s copies of Laski’s books, with dates of purchase neatly inscribed, and marginal notes included, now belong to the author.

  12. 12.

    On the views of American political scientists, see especially Smith 1999 and Tractenberg 2009.

  13. 13.

    On historical sociology and IR, see Lawson 2006.

  14. 14.

    See especially Guilhot 2011.

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Hall, I. (2019). The English School’s Histories and International Relations. In: Schmidt, B., Guilhot, N. (eds) Historiographical Investigations in International Relations. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78036-8_8

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