The history of international thought and International Relations theory: from context to interpretation
| Author | Ian Hall |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117817723061 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723061
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 241 –260
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723061
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
The history of international
thought and International
Relations theory: from
context to interpretation
Ian Hall
Griffith University
Abstract
Over the past two decades, historians of international thought have markedly improved our
understanding of the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) and its wider intellectual
history. During that period, ‘contextualism’ has become a leading approach in the field, as it
has been for half a century in the history of political thought. This article argues that while the
application of contextualism in IR has improved our understanding of its disciplinary history,
its assumptions about the proper relationship between historians and theorists threaten to
marginalise the history of international thought within IR. It argues that unless the inherent
weaknesses in contextualism are recognised, the progress made in the field will go unrecognised
by a discipline that sees little reason to engage with its history. It suggests that historians of
international thought adopt an extensively modified version of contextualism that would allow
them to rebuild bridges back into IR, especially IR theory.
Keywords
intellectual history, disciplinary history, International Relations theory, contextualism,
presentism
The history of international thought (HIT) has emerged over the past two decades as a
significant subfield of International Relations (IR). But it remains a marginal interest for
most scholars of IR. In part, this article argues, this marginalisation has occurred as
historians of international thought have embraced the ‘contextualist’ approach associated
Corresponding author:
Ian Hall, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan,
QLD 4111, Australia.
Email: i.hall@griffith.edu.au
723061IRE0010.1177/0047117817723061International RelationsHall
research-article2017
Article
242 International Relations 31(3)
with the so-called ‘Cambridge school’, an approach that has dominated the history of
political thought (HPT) since the 1960s.
Contextualists argue that historians of ideas should analyse the arguments past think-
ers present in their texts in the context of the political languages available to their authors
at the time they were written. By establishing the conventional meanings of the vocabu-
laries of past political languages, they think, we can establish the intentions of authors
and therefore the authentic meanings of past texts.
Contextualism is a powerful and influential approach. Its adherents have generated a
significant number of major studies in HPT and, increasingly, in HIT.1 But, contextual-
ism also has drawbacks. In the field of politics, its prescriptions for the ways in which
past texts should be interpreted have driven a wedge between historians, on one side, and
political theorists, on the other side. In IR, I argue, the rise of contextualism in the sub-
field of HIT threatens to do something similar – despite the best intentions of some of
leading contextualists, who want their work to speak to IR in general and IR theory in
particular.
This article analyses the rise of contextualism in HIT, its drawbacks as an approach to
the history of ideas, and the challenges contextualist approaches pose to productive dia-
logue between HIT and IR theory. The first part looks briefly at the achievements of HIT
as it has emerged in recent years. The second examines the background to and reasons
for the rise of contextualism in HIT. The third turns to the limits of contextualism as an
approach to both HPT and HIT. The fourth looks at how some leading scholars of HIT
have tried to move beyond these limits and some of the problems that they have encoun-
tered in their efforts. The fifth and concluding section explores the possibility of moving
beyond contextualism towards an approach to the history of ideas that would allow it to
more directly address IR theory.
A brief history of HIT
Although historians of political thought still sometimes sneer at scholarship in the HIT,2
since the mid-1990s our understanding of IR’s intellectual history has been reshaped.3
We now know much more about inter-war thinkers and theories and about the diversity
of so-called ‘idealist’ or ‘internationalist’ thought in that period.4 It is no longer possible
credibly to maintain that ‘idealism’ was swept from the field by ‘realism’ in the late
1930s or early 1940s, or that a ‘First Great Debate’ occurred, at least in the way it was
constructed in the imaginations of post-war theorists.5
We also know a great deal more about the mid-century American realists, the European
ideas that influenced them and their struggles with behaviouralism.6 The development of
the English school from an Oxbridge club to a significant theoretical tradition is now
well understood,7 as are the linkages and discontinuities between European imperial
thought and Western international thought as it evolved in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.8 Work continues apace on major texts of pre-twentieth century international
thought, with revisionist accounts of significant theorists from Thucydides to John Stuart
Mill (and thinkers thereafter) published in recent years.9 And some progress has been
made in chronicling and evaluating the contributions of hitherto marginal thinkers and
ideas, of past female international theorists and activists,10 for example, and the many
To continue reading
Request your trial