Recent literature on the disciplinary history of IR has furthered our understanding of aspects of the discipline without specifying its own methods clearly enough. ‘Critical’ or ‘internal discursive’ disciplinary historians have rejected Quentin Skinner's contextual approach to the history of ideas in ways that suggest they have misunderstood it, and have failed to appreciate its potential. Furthermore, ‘critical IR’ itself can and should be subjected to intellectual-historical examination. The article suggests that ‘critical IR’ has been a form of anglophone academic radicalism specific to the late Cold War and early post-Cold War periods, and advocates further comparative work on the history of non-anglophone IR communities.