History Of International Relations Research Paper

1. German Origins

International relations was converted into a field of historical sciences study during the first half of the nineteenth century; this means that, by then, international relation’s were isolated as an investigation object, whose treatment originated its own scientific procedures, capable of evolving with relative autonomy. The conception of this research area was associated with the creativity of Leopold Von Ranke considered by many to be the founder of scientific historiography. Ranke was convinced that European civilization fermented in the states system and could achieve a universal dimension. He constructed a history of international relations based on a tripod: (a) the study of European great states’ internal development; (b) the study of collective movements and the forces resulting from institutional, religious, or social experience; and (c) the analysis of foreign policies, involving the relations among states, and particularly the confrontations among great powers.

From German unification, in 1870–71, to the First World War, a deviation of German historiography from international relations took place, reducing Ranke’s original European and universal scope of study, and establishing the primacy of foreign policy, which served to exhibit the ascension of Prussia during the Wilhelminic Era. This type of ‘germanocentric’ approach acquired national equivalents in other European countries, which caused history of international relations to be reduced into a diplomatic history. This new form of history of international relations preserved, within Europe and outside it, the scientific character of exploring archival documents; however, it turned apologetic by receding its arguments to those of chancelleries belonging to the countries to which historians were connected; it became, then, poor in cognitive terms, since it merely treated the apparent movement of states’ behavior, and neglected the other relevant aspects of Rankean analysis.

During the same period, the study of international relations had to face imperialism, a phenomenon related to the domination, either formal or informal, direct or indirect, of European States, as well as of the United States and Japan, over other territories, especially the southern area of the planet. This fact coincided with worldwide spread of the great powers’ foreign policies. Responses to the challenge of explaining imperialism came, on one side, from imperialism theories—which were neither theory nor history of international relations—and, on the other side, from diplomatic history, this one ambitiously searching scientific explanations which were, nevertheless, attached to the interests of national states. When the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919 blamed the German Empire for the onset of the First World War, the fact that many historians from various countries debated the causes of the conflict and the responsibility of different states reinforced the introspective character of diplomatic history. It thus distanced itself more and more from Ranke’s conceptual definition and universalist proposals.

2. Multiple Causes—The French Contribution

It was not before the period between the World Wars that historiographical revolution took place which would rescue the study of international relations to the modern world of social sciences. This movement was strongly influenced by French historians, and it had one of its centers in the Institut d’Histoire des Relations Internationales Contemporaines (Institute of Contemporary International Relations History), created in 1935 at the Sorbonne, and directed by Pierre Renouvin, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Rene Girault, and Robert Frank successively. The knowledge elaborated by the Sorbonne group encompasses hundreds of Ph.D. theses, a general history of international relations, works of theoretical reflection on the theme, as well as dozens of specialized books and the periodical Relations Internationales, published in association with the Graduate Institute of International Relations, in Geneva, since 1974.

Despite recognizing the role of the state, particularly the great powers and empires (Duroselle), the French have penetrated the social dimension of international relations (Renouvin) and given special emphasis to the role of economics as a long-term factor conditioning the trends (Girault). Consequently, the object of study won higher precision and scientific adequacy. Reflections on how to make both a history of international relations and a critical evaluation of the knowledge produced about it have led to the method’s refinement towards multiple causes. This was accompanied by the diversification of information sources in order to embrace the complexity of factors aggregated to the research.

These French historians tried to create a corpus of knowledge for understanding international relations by defining four complimentary investigation directions. First, historians should identify the components of international life involving statesmen—whose temperament is to be disclosed in the light of anthropology and psychology; the images people have of foreigners; the importance of borders and of groupings, such as small organized communities; nation-state and plurinational organizations. Second, the historian is expected to investigate origins and causes of international relations, comprehending a body of historical forces (nature elements, demography, economics, principles and values), whose movement and efficacy should be described and connected to foreign policy decisions. Third, the study should turn to identifying the purposes of international action, which involve the determination of agents, the role of information, as well as the means, ends, and risks of strategic planning. In order to circumscribe the object of study in all its dimensions, the historian should, fourth, follow the movement, the process of international relations through time, unveiling the scheme of symmetrical or asymmetrical relations, peaceful or conflicting negotiations, war, and diplomacy.

These four groups of factors represent diverse ways of research and illuminate the object of study in an attempt to provide it with a understanding. The multiple causes system consists precisely of this complex approach. According to Duroselle, the theory of international relations, the point to which historical investigation flows, should be based on empirical knowledge, and would have as its cognitive frontier the establishment of regularities, rules, and recipes taken from history’s advice. One example is the idea that the empire—the excess of power—will always perish, either because it engenders the unbearable on its dominions, or because it provokes the coalition that destroys it.

3. Order Over Anarchy—The British Perspective

Since the 1950s, an intellectual effervescence comparable to the earlier one in France, motivating studies on international relations history, could be observed in England. The renovating spirit has modified its historical focus, evolving from strong empirical hues to systemic approaches. In the origins of this modernizing movement are Donald Watt, professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, the members of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, which operated for 25 years congregating researchers among whom are Herbert Butterfield, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, and Adam Watson. The Expansion of International Society (1984) and The Evolution of International Society (1992), amid other works, have divulged new research trends and British contributions to the field of knowledge.

These British scholars on international relations kindled the faith on the classics (Hobbes, Locke, Grotius, Kant, Pufendorf, Heeren, Clausewitz, Hanan, Tocqueville, Ranke). British historians accentuated enduring aspects of human nature which reflect on the evolution of international relations, by making international life somehow predictable and emphasizing continuity over change. According to them, economic, political, and military interactions among states which depend on each other and are guided by their own interests eventually lead to establishing rules, institutions, and common relationship values which, in turn, orient the external conducts of those states. Thus, the system of States or international system is formed. In some cases, this international system intensifies its net of interactions on the basis of specific rules and values, originating the international society, this one having a strong cultural tone. This evolution characterizes the passage, in the eighteenth century, from the European States system to the European International Society.

Despite not admitting associates to its directory group, the European International Society expanded towards American countries and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It gave room to an international system on a worldwide scale—movable, pluralist, competition-prone—whose expansion device was the great powers’ European concert. It imposed forms of internal organization and relations among States, juridical regulations, ways of trading, living and thinking, and engendered, from 1800 to 1914, the greatest global domination system ever yet known. Conflicts among its protagonists and protests against Western supremacy allowed the rise of a new scenario, marked by the emergence of the two superpowers, against the background of the Second World War, and of the Third World afterwards. A new international society was born. This worldwide international society of the twentieth century’s second half, partly heir to the former, partly led by diverse rules, institutions, and values, evidences the decline of the European matrix in terms of both world order conformation and international relations. At the end of the Cold War, with the challenges of world reorganization, British historians would do better— according to the Italian critic Brunello Vigezzi—if they insisted less on European inheritance and influence on the configuration of international society, and recognized in it the fecundity of its richness and possibilities.

The British school had, therefore, the merit of fruitfully associating the theory and history of international relations, thus creating the key concepts of system and society in order to advance in the comprehension of international life. The English connected past and present and cultivated a belief in the ability of international agents to administrate anarchy via consensus. If Duroselle was convinced that there is no possible theory of international relations without a historical basis, to Watson, Theory and History blend together. But British scholars, unlike the American political scientists, are not interested in a prince counseling theory. They are concerned more about the cognitive side and reflect intellectual preferences, ideals, and values, which they consider most adequate to study international life.

4. Contributions From Italy And Switzerland

In Italy, modern international relations historiography established a dialog with the French school. Federico Chabod and Pierre Renouvin conversed about methodological conceptions and approaches. This dialog broadened with the diffusion by Brunello Vigezzi of the above-mentioned British Committee works in Italy. As a result of these interactions and of its own creativity—take, for instance, the works of Mario Toscano and Ennio Di Nolfo, among others— the Italian school became fertile and diversified. Its originality lays on the insistence on spiritual forces inherent to the movement of international life: mentalities, sentiments, public opinion, collective passions, systems of values. The Italians’ works mirrored, therefore, their peninsula’s international relations and foreign affairs, that is, the divisions which have opposed conservatives to revolutionaries, monarchists to republicans, expansionists to moderates, in the last two centuries.

Even denser tighter closer was the collaboration between the French and the Swiss. Nevertheless, also in this case there was a singularity characterizing the studies developed especially by the Graduate Institute of International Relations at Geneva University (Antoine Fleury, Jacques Freymond, Daniel Bourgeois, Yves Collart). This Institute, organized to refine interdisciplinary studies of international relations, has distinguished itself precisely for incorporating to history contributions from other disciplines, above all political science, but also economics and law. In addition, it has not left aside the interest on neutrality, which has been one of the historical trends of Swiss foreign policy.

5. The National Imperatives In The United States

Two facts conditioned the expansion of studies on international relations history in the United States: the escalating role of the country in twentieth century international relations, and the extraordinary development of international relations theory evidenced since the Second World War. The two facts granted the field of study an introspective trait not observed in other regions, with respect to both the study method and the elaborated knowledge. This introspective trait separates American scholars from the universalist approach of the European schools. Nevertheless, it is inappropriate to conclude that the history of international relations in this country has had a linear development of its object, focus, and method. Perhaps no other historiography has presented such anguish and hesitations.

As of the 1930s, similarly to what happened in the rest of the world, a documental and scientific yet ethnocentric diplomatic history flourished in the United States, exemplified by the works of Samuel Bemis. As in other countries, the reaction came in the following two decades; it was conducted, to the greatest extent, by Thomas Bailey and Charles Beard whose studies brought back internal factors, as well as universal, economic, social, and ideological conditionings of foreign policy decisions. The movement inwards was substantiated in the years following the Second World War, when a strong nationalist interpretation trend was observed as a result of the Cold War and of the country’s expanding international responsibilities. Realist theorists and consensualist historians such as Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Walter Lippman privileged the state as an agent of international relations and appealed to the elements of national unity to confront external threats, among which were firstly nazi-fascism, and then communism. An official and ideological knowledge was produced.

The refraining of the Cold War and the painful experience of the Vietnam War strengthened critical reflections about international relations. In the 1970s, numerous historians followed researchers like William Appleman Williams and David Horowitz among others, on the path of their discoveries about the relativity of national ideals; the responsibility, shared with the Soviet Union, for the onset of the Cold War; and the prevalence of North American economic interests over international politics.

This critical refinement has gone further in the last decades of the twentieth century, particularly due to the opening of archives and the handling of classified documents in the United States, Russia, and other countries; also relevant has been the use by researchers of modern technological resources. This is how British Alan Milward rebuilt, on the base of new empirical information, the history of relations among European countries, and remade the path to European integration shifting away from the idealistic explanations originated by Jean Monnet’s conceptions. In the United States, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Stanley Hoffman, Robert Gilpin, Samuel Huntington, and John Lewis Gaddis—although it is unfair to mention only these names—reintroduced discussions about important issues referring to the North American great power’s relations with the world after the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Research again revolved the decision-making process in foreign policy and began to understand the United States’ role as the only hegemony on a planetary scale since the end of the Cold War.

At the end of the twentieth century, one cannot identify a hegemonic current of contemporary international relations interpretation in the United States. Nor can it be affirmed that this country’s historians have released themselves from the cognitive constraints of the past. These constraints derive from both the frustrations of international theory to explain the evolution on international life, and the endless contending of interpretations. Gaddis has expressed in these circumstances North Americans’ pessimism towards the scientific value of historical knowledge.

It does not seem adequate to apply to the United States the notion of an international relations history school valid for European research groups earlier mentioned, since American historians have not demonstrated continuity and coherence in the method’s choice and in the definition of the study object. North Americans have accomplished a rich and diverse research experiment, whose long-term profile lies on the value of realist approaches, which restrict the observation scope of their nation-state’s actions. In a certain way, they have prolonged throughout modernity and postmodernity the introspective traits of old diplomatic history elaborated before the 1930s.

6. Brazil, Argentina—The Southern Approach

Just as in other parts of the world, Latin America also displayed the treaty-led, factual, and apologetic diplomatic history so common before the Second World War. Pandia Calogeras, in Brazil, and Vicente G. Quesada, in Argentina, clearly represent this approach. The History Department at the University of Brasilia and the Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia Economica y Social (Institute for Social and Economic Historical Research) at the Buenos Aires University have gathered precursory advanced study groups which allowed modernization of that field of knowledge in the region. In those institutions, studies of international relations history acquired a unique profile deriving from Latin American country’s own way of viewing the world, supplied by their concerns and external designs.

Thus, the perspective of international analysis in the region diminished the role of war and security, since the subcontinent has a pacific tradition. At the same time, the Southern approach emphasized the role of the development in international studies. The central argument explored by Latin American scholars has been the fact that development is the axis of majors countries’ foreign policies since the 1930s.

In addition to general histories of Brazilian and Argentinean international relations (Jose Paradiso Juan Archibaldo Lanus, Paulo G. F. Vizentini Clodoaldo Bueno, Amado Luiz Cervo) various studies have explored the relations between these countries and the great powers, mainly the United States (Gerson Moura, Moniz Bandeira, Mario Rapoport), between these countries and Africa (Jose Honorio Rodrigues, Jose Flavio Sombra Saraiva), as well as regional relations (Paulo Roberto de Almeida, Edmundo Anibal Heredia, Francisco Doratioto). Historians have concentrated their analyses both on the economic possibilities opened by the expansion of capitalism and on mechanisms to bear or overcome historical backwardness. They had to face the local foreign policy options dilemma: to choose either an autonomous development, based on a robust and sustainable national economy, or a development associated with international economic forces, based on foreign capital and enterprises. Amidst the bipolar world and the globalization taking place in the end of the twentieth century, relevant issues were constantly discussed. Among them, development’s legitimacy, inequality among nations, asymmetric relations between superpowers and developing countries, international cooperation, exploitation and dependence, the permanence of power and wealth structures, as well as other ingredients of Latin American countries’ experiences of international insertion.

7. The Specific And The General In Historians’ Works

The international relations history field of study is not merely the field of multiple causes resulting from the empirical dimension of research and from the relevance of the process over the event. It is also the field of the political world, in which peoples’ necessities, interests, ideas, and values sprout when they envisage other peoples or move beyond their borders. Historians reflect this double-faced research on their work.

Cognitive improvement depended in the past and depends nowadays on the careful conservation of historical documents and on the easy access that governments and international organizations grant researchers. This improvement has evidenced the need to diversify information sources, going beyond diplomatic archives kept in chancelleries and similar institutions, which are necessary but insufficient to clear up some questions posed by international life analysts. Schools and interpretation currents spread all over the world reveal, first, that international relations have consolidated as a study object for historians; second, that they developed coherent and efficient research methods; and third, that the amount of knowledge elaborated should be proportional to the growing importance of international relations in the lives of individuals and societies in the last two centuries.

The march towards the expansion of this field of knowledge has profited from two dialogs established in its course. Historians organized the Commission of History of International Relations within the International Committee of Historical Sciences in the 1980s, which promotes frequent colloquia where experts exchange research experiments aiming at purifying concepts and practices. Apart from this process, historians have broadened their interactions with akin sciences, such as economics, psychology, anthropology and, especially, political science and the theory of international relations.

When theorists and historians of international relations work, they meet in one underground stream (Brunello Vigezzi) of international life; in it, theorists realize that their explanatory formulations become more coherent provided the enlargement of the observation field’s empirical base, and historians agree that theories illuminate reality and open ways to its comprehension. Notions suggested by some authors to oppose Theory to History are precisely the same ones advocated by other authors in order to unite these two areas of knowledge. The greatest masters in the study of international relations tend to unify History and Theory by using the evidence and the hypothesis, the past and the present, the internal and the external, the empiric and the theoretic, the comprehension and the decision.

Cooperation between history of international relations and social sciences has led people to believe that the evolution of this study area, taken the increasing interdependence observed in international life after the Cold War and the North–South dialog, requires new method adjustments and problem identification. Nation-state and national interest conceptual categories, which served scientific development in the past, are challenged by new concepts such as global governance and universal citizenship. In this sense, why not request that the British equip their concepts of international system and international society in order to follow the transformations of the study field and to step on the terrain of global responsibilities? Why not expect from Italians the application of new ideas and systems of alues to fill the gap left by the collapse of ideological imperialism which impregnated the world during the Cold War period? The versatile and rapid North Americans, just as the structuralist South Americans, might be required to provide instruments of analysis and explanations to phenomena such as international violence and oppression, solidarity and indifference, exploitation and cooperation, the exercise of power and self-determination of peoples. Also, the French may advance towards the consolidation of multiple causes as an applicable method to the study of factors and agents on a perspective of interdependence. And shouldn’t the Germans, in their turn, heirs of the rankean tradition, seek the combination of local impulse and universal impact of international forces over the shaping of an unequal world?

Historical knowledge bears strong consistence due to the empirical analytic method which establishes the primacy of induction over deduction. Nevertheless, it is imperative to rethink History continually and to provoke ruptures of interpretation as did German Fritz Fischer concerning First World War origins, and some North American historians regarding the role of the United States in delineation of the Cold War order.

This research paper has summarized the history of international relations by emphasizing the contribution of the dynamic groups within the key countries and regions. But this has not meant the exclusion of pluralism inside these countries nor common guidelines which exist among different national backgrounds. It has elected some names and some schools or interpretation currents of international relations history in intending to define its field of study, trace its evolution in the last two centuries, and underline its relevance in the ensemble of social and behavioral sciences. Beyond those whose names were mentioned, hundreds of others add the result of their works to the historians’ rich and diversified contribution. Thus, come to mind the historiography from other European and non-European countries such as Russia, Australia, Japan, India, and China. For pedagogical purposes, the history of international relations should first maintain its reference to history of civilization, and second, it should purify itself and absorb the dialogs among historians and between them and other experts in social and behavioral sciences on a global scale.

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