International intellectual history and International Relations: contexts, canons and mediocrities
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117817723068 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723068
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 341 –356
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723068
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International intellectual
history and International
Relations: contexts, canons
and mediocrities
Edward Keene
University of Oxford
Abstract
This article reviews contextualist methods in intellectual history and discusses some of the
specific challenges involved in their application to the study of International Relations (IR) and
hence international intellectual history. While the broad thrust of these developments has been
highly positive, the article argues that a distinction between classic and lesser works is a crucial
part of the apparatus of the contextualist approach, which poses a problem in IR, where the
idea of an established canon of great works has historically been less well developed than in
the study of Political Theory or Law. As a result, the move towards contextualist methods of
interpretation can force authors to restrict their focus onto a newly conceived, and somewhat
narrow, canon, with a strongly political and legal flavour. The eclectic range of earlier, albeit less
methodologically sophisticated, histories offer considerable resources for defining the scope of
new empirical enquiries in international intellectual history, and the article concentrates on early
modern journalism as an example of this opportunity.
Keywords
contextualism, early modern journalism, intellectual history, international political thought,
International Relations theory, Martin Wight, Quentin Skinner, three traditions
Mark Bevir recently commented that ‘historical studies of political theory are flourishing’,
and he suggested that they might even be ‘squeezing out studies that mine past texts for
jewels of wisdom without bothering with either historical or philosophical defenses of the
alleged jewels’.1 This change has many sources and manifests itself in many different ways
Corresponding author:
Edward Keene, Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Oxford, Christ Church,
Oxford, OX1 1DP, UK.
Email: edward.keene@politics.ox.ac.uk
723068IRE0010.1177/0047117817723068International RelationsKeene
research-article2017
Article
342 International Relations 31(3)
both within and between academic disciplines. In this article, I am interested in what the
new historicism implies for the study of international political thought, which has become
an extremely lively area for innovative scholarship. International Relations (IR) theorists
have increasingly embraced new historiographical approaches, such as contextualism and
critical disciplinary history.2 Moreover, historians working within intellectual history, or in
relatively new areas such as global history, have begun to develop their own reflections into
questions that might be seen as falling under the heading of ‘international relations’, often
breaking new ground both methodologically and substantively.3 Notwithstanding impor-
tant differences of emphasis, there is much in common across these efforts, and one of the
principal tasks for the future may well be to encourage greater engagement between schol-
ars self-consciously working within the IR discipline and those from fields of political
theory, history or law in this new international intellectual history.
To explore some of the opportunities, and potential problems, in this bridge-building
exercise, I will begin by looking back to some of the ways in which the contextualist
approach to the study of the history of political thought was originally conceived by
Quentin Skinner and ask how the kinds of concerns that animated him, and which help
explain his remarkable impact among historians and political philosophers, relate to the
specific circumstances of doing intellectual history within the context of the disciplinary
field of IR. Contextualism is by no means the only method on offer, nor is Skinner the
only intellectual historian to have exerted an influence here. Bevir, to take just one exam-
ple, is quick to note that Skinner’s contextualism itself may represent little more than
some rather superfluous philosophical scaffolding erected on what was an already devel-
oped line of empiricist enquiry in the history of political thought. Moreover, to the extent
that there is a distinctively Skinnerian approach, I would agree with Bevir that it hardly
enjoys some kind of methodological hegemony among intellectual historians today. As I
will reflect at the end of the article, there are all sorts of diverse approaches available to
us, and it seems to add little value to insist that any of them is primus inter pares, or to
create barriers between them that do not need to be there. Nevertheless, it is very clear
that Skinner’s work has played a significant role in establishing a historically oriented
sensibility in the prominent position among political theorists, IR scholars, lawyers and
others that it enjoys today. His work is a major reason why it would appear unacceptably
naïve to attempt a return to the kind of readings and interpretive strategies that used to be
commonplace before the appearance of The Foundations of Modern Political Thought.
This at least provides us with a starting point.
At first glance, it might well appear that intellectual history is intellectual history in
whatever context one does it and that IR should present no specific difficulties or chal-
lenges of its own. However, I argue that when one brings these two fields together, the
fit is not quite so straightforward. It is not simply the case that a new research pro-
gramme for international intellectual history would be to add contextualism and stir.
The main focus of my argument is to enquire into the relationship between context and
canon, suggesting that the two need each other, at least in the way that Skinner’s con-
textualism was originally framed (but also recognising that his own work has evolved
over time). One aspect of this is that a key pay-off from contextualism was that it led to
radical new readings of generally accepted ‘classical’ works; indeed, Skinner was
explicit that he saw that as the ‘main reason’ for going to the immense trouble of
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