Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T02:02:43.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Taking history seriously in IR: Towards a historicist approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2017

Lorenzo Cello*
Affiliation:
International Relations and Political Theory, University of Queensland
*
*Correspondence to: Lorenzo Cello, School of Political Science & International Studies (Building 39A, Level 5) – The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Brisbane, Australia. Author’s email: l.cello@uq.edu.au

Abstract

IR scholars have always invoked history as a valuable resource for understanding the present. However, the question of how should we go about investigating and interpreting the past is rarely asked, let alone answered. While most IR approaches are anchored to the attempt to situate oneself outside history – reading the past in terms of the present or in terms of a hypothetical future – this article strives to redress the kind of historical perspective adopted, if at all, by IR scholars. It does so by advancing a distinctive historicist approach that emphasises the importance of understanding past practices and discourses in their own historical and intellectual contexts. In order to substantiate this claim, the article goes on to critically engage with recent calls to historicise intervention in IR, arguing that a historicist mode of analysis represents a corrective to presentism as well as an alternative route into present-day debates.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Reus-Smit, Christian, ‘Theory, history and great transformations’, International Theory, 8:3 (2016), pp. 422425 Google Scholar. See also MacKay, Joseph and LaRoche, Christopher David, ‘The conduct of history in International Relations: Rethinking philosophy of history in IR theory’, International Theory, 9:2 (2017), pp. 203236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See, for example, the Special IssueHistoricising the Social in International Thought’, Review of International Studies, 41:4 (2015)Google Scholar; and the recent symposiumTheory, History and the Global Transformation’, International Theory, 8:3 (2016)Google Scholar.

3 de Carvalho, Benjamin, Leira, Halvard, and Hobson, John M., ‘The Big Bangs of IR: the myths that your teachers still tell you about 1648 and 1919’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39:3 (2011), pp. 735758 Google Scholar.

4 For some examples, see Bell, Duncan, ‘International Relations: the dawn of a historiographical turn?’, The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 3:1 (2001), pp. 115126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bell, Duncan, ‘Political theory and the functions of intellectual history: a response to Emmanuel Navon’, Review of International Studies, 29:1 (2003), pp. 151160 Google Scholar; Keene, Edward, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Keene, Edward, International Political Thought: A Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Jahn, Beate, Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, Ian, ‘Power politics and appeasement: Political realism in British international thought, c. 1935–1955’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 8 (2006), pp. 175176 Google Scholar; Roshchin, Evgeny, ‘(Un)natural and contractual international society: a conceptual inquiry’, European Journal of International Relations, 19:2 (2013), pp. 257279 Google Scholar; Ashworth, Lucian M., A History of International Thought: From the Origins of the Modern State to Academic International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2014)Google Scholar.

5 Lee, Dwight E. and Beck, Robert N., ‘The meaning of “historicism”’, The American Historical Review, 59:3 (1954), p. 570 Google Scholar.

6 Liebel, Helen P., ‘The enlightenment and the rise of historicism in German thought’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4:4 (1971), pp. 377385 Google Scholar.

7 Bevir, Mark, Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Liebel, , ‘The enlightenment and the rise of historicism in German thought’, p. 361 Google Scholar.

9 In their attempt to map the different philosophies of history at work in IR scholarship, MacKay and LaRoche in ‘The conduct of history in International Relations’ suggest an increasing tendency to move away from linear, teleological, and continuist views of history, and towards multilinear ones in which history has a plurality of more or less intelligible trajectories.

10 Hobson, J. M. and Lawson, G., ‘What is history in International Relations?’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 37:2 (2008), p. 422 Google Scholar.

11 Devetak, Richard, ‘A rival enlightenment? Critical international theory in historical mode’, International Theory, 6:3 (2014), pp. 441447 Google Scholar. For a statement of constructivism’s approach to history, see Reus-Smit, Christian, ‘Reading history through constructivist eyes’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 37:2 (2008), pp. 395414 Google Scholar. For a study exemplifying the possible synergies between constructivist and contextualist approaches, see Holland, Ben, ‘Sovereignty as dominium? Reconstructing the constructivist Roman law thesis’, International Studies Quarterly, 54:2 (2010), pp. 449480 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Devetak, , ‘A rival enlightenment?’, p. 443 Google Scholar.

13 Owens, Patricia, ‘Method or madness? Sociolatry in international thought’, Review of International Studies, 41:4 (2015), p. 651 Google Scholar.

14 See, for example, Acharya’s recent call to introduce a ‘norm circulation’ approach to the study of ‘norm life cycle’. Amitav Acharya, ‘The responsibility to protect and a theory of norm circulation’, in Ramesh Thakur and William Maley (eds), Theorising the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 59–78.

15 This is a point that Martin Weber also raises, though in the context of his defence of an intellectual space for critical normative theory in Weber, Martin, ‘Between “isses” and “oughts”: IR constructivism, critical theory, and the challenge of political philosophy’, European Journal of International Relations, 20:2 (2014), pp. 528530 Google Scholar.

16 Engelkamp, Stephan and Glaab, Katharina, ‘Writing norms: Constructivist norm research and the politics of ambiguity’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 40:3–4 (2015), p. 2 Google Scholar.

17 Examples of this kind of approach are Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn, ‘International norm dynamics and political change’, International Organization, 52:4 (1998), pp. 887917 Google Scholar; Finnemore, Martha, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Barnett, Michael N. and Finnemore, M., Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For similar criticisms, see Wiener, Antje, ‘The dual quality of norms and governance beyond the state: Sociological and normative approaches to “interaction”’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 10:1 (2007), pp. 4769 Google Scholar; Krook, Mona L. and True, Jacqui, ‘Rethinking the life cycles of international norms: The United Nations and the global promotion of gender equality’, European Journal of International Relations, 18:1 (2012), p. 104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zanotti, Laura, ‘Governmentality, ontology, methodology: Re-thinking political agency in the global world’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 38:4 (2013), p. 296 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zanotti, Laura, ‘Questioning universalism, devising an ethics without foundations: an exploration of International Relations ontologies and epistemologies’, Journal of International Political Theory, 11:3 (2015), p. 280 Google Scholar; Engelkamp, and Glaab, , ‘Writing norms’, p. 3 Google Scholar.

18 Xavier Guillaume, ‘Historicising the international’, E-International Relations (2013).

19 Phillips, Andrew and Sharman, Jason C., ‘Explaining durable diversity in international systems: State, company, and empire in the Indian Ocean’, International Studies Quarterly, 59:3 (2015), pp. 436448 Google Scholar; Phillips, Andrew, War, Religion and Empire: The Transformation of International Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Reus-Smit, Christian, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

20 Reus-Smit, , ‘Reading history through constructivist eyes’, p. 395 Google Scholar.

21 Pocock, J. G. A., Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, Volume I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

22 Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and understanding in history’, History and Theory, 8:1 (1969), pp. 4752 Google Scholar.

23 Skinner, Quentin, Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. xv Google Scholar. On the advantages of an ‘empirical intellectual history’, see Hunter, Ian, ‘The history of theory’, Critical Inquiry, 33:1 (2006), p. 75 Google Scholar; Hunter, Ian, ‘The history of philosophy and the persona of the philosopher’, Modern Intellectual History, 4:3 (2007), pp. 571600 Google Scholar.

24 Parekh, Bhikhu and Berki, R. N., ‘The history of political ideas: a critique of Quentin Skinner’s methodology’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 34 (1973), p. 175 Google Scholar.

25 Skinner, , Visions of Politics I, pp. 9899 Google Scholar; Devetak, , ‘A rival enlightenment?’, p. 444 Google Scholar.

26 Skinner, , Visions of Politics I, p. 122 Google Scholar.

27 Skinner, Quentin, ‘Some problems in the analysis of political thought and action’, in James Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 104 Google Scholar.

28 Bevir, Mark, ‘The contextual approach’, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011a), pp. 1124 Google Scholar.

29 Armitage, David, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 1932 Google Scholar.

30 Dunn, John, ‘The identity of the history of ideas’, Philosophy, 43:164 (1968), pp. 9899 Google Scholar.

31 Bell, , ‘Political theory and the functions of intellectual history’, p. 153 Google Scholar.

32 For an argument about Skinner’s unacknowledged debts to historicism, see Joseph V. Femia, ‘An historicist critique of “revisionist” methods for studying the history of ideas’, in Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context, pp. 156–75.

33 Bourdieu, Pierre, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 127140 Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 136.

35 Ibid., p. 134.

36 Bell, Duncan, ‘Political theory and the functions of intellectual history: a response to Emmanuel Navon’, Review of International Studies, 29:1 (2003), p. 154 Google Scholar (quote). See also Condren, Conal, ‘Historiographical myth, discipline, and contextual distortion’, History of European Ideas, 40:1 (2014)Google Scholar.

37 Bevir, Mark, ‘The logic of the history of ideas then and now’, Intellectual History Review, 21:1 (2011), p. 111 Google Scholar.

38 Naomi Oreskes talks of various ‘presentisms’, among which ‘motivational presentism’. Oreskes, Naomi, ‘Why I am a presentist’, Science in Context, 26:4 (2013), p. 596 Google Scholar. For a more cautious endorsement of this position, see Condren, , ‘Historiographical myth, discipline, and contextual distortion’, pp. 3738 Google Scholar.

39 Skinner, Quentin, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 118119 Google Scholar.

40 Condren, , ‘Historiographical myth, discipline, and contextual distortion’, p. 38 Google Scholar.

41 Armitage, David, ‘Modern international thought: Problems and prospects’, History of European Ideas, 41:1 (2014), p. 118 Google Scholar. See also the critical exchange on Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought in Hutchings, K., Bartelson, J., Keene, E., Ypi, L., Kinsella, H. M., and Armitage, D., ‘Foundations of modern international theory’, Contemporary Political Theory, 13:4 (2014), pp. 387418 Google Scholar.

42 Debates about the ‘critical’ purposes of scholarly research and its relation to ethical reasoning are indeed very lively in the discipline of IR. For instance, Price, Richard M. et al., ‘Special Forum on moral limit and possibility in world politics’, International Theory, 4:3 (2012), pp. 430434 Google Scholar.

43 Walter, Ryan, ‘Reconciling Foucault and Skinner on the state: the primacy of politics?’, History of the Human Sciences, 21:3 (2008), pp. 94114 Google Scholar.

44 Skinner, , Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 118 Google Scholar.

45 Skinner, , Visions of Politics I , p. 125 Google Scholar.

46 Foucault, Michel, ‘The concern for truth’, in Sylvère Lotringer (ed.), Foucault Live (Interviews, 1966–84) (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), pp. 303306 Google Scholar. In recent years Foucault’s works have given rise to lively discussions in the field of International Relations as to his ‘emancipatory potential’. See the Special IssueMichel Foucault: New Directions in Theorising World Politics’, Global Society, 23:4 (2009)Google Scholar. Also, the Forums: ‘Assessing the Impact of Foucault on International Relations’, International Political Sociology, 4:2 (2010)Google Scholar; and ‘Foucault and International Political Sociology’, International Political Sociology, 2:3 (2008).

47 Neal, Andrew W., ‘Empiricism without positivism: King Lear and critical security studies’, in M. B. Salter and C. E. Mutlu (eds), Research Methods in Critical Security Studies: An Introduction (New York Routledge, 2013), pp. 4245 Google Scholar; Bourke, Richard and Geuss, Raymond, Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 126 Google Scholar.

48 See, for instance, Skinner, Quentin, ‘The sovereign state: a genealogy’, in Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner (eds), Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 2646 Google Scholar.

49 Skinner, , Liberty Before Liberalism, p. 122 Google Scholar, fn. 19. For Foucault’s structuralist work par excellence, see Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973)Google Scholar. On the problems connected with Foucault’s structuralist period, see Hunter, ‘The history of theory’.

50 For an exchange on Skinner’s ‘genealogical turn’, see Lane, Melissa, ‘Doing our own thinking for ourselves: On Quentin Skinner’s genealogical turn’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 73:1 (2012), pp. 7180 Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, ‘On the liberty of the Ancients and the Moderns: a reply to my critics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 73:1 (2012), pp. 127146 Google Scholar.

51 Foucault, Michel, Bisogna Difendere la Societa (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2008), pp. 1819 Google Scholar.

52 Vucetic, Srdjan, ‘Genealogy as a research tool in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 37:3 (2011), pp. 13001303 Google Scholar.

53 Foucault, Michel, ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in Paul Rabinow and Paul Nikolas Rose (eds), The Essential Foucault (New York: The New Press, 2003), p. 351 Google Scholar.

54 Bartelson, Jens, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 5465 Google Scholar.

55 This view of history seems to sit astride four of the categories elaborated by MacKay and LaRoche, ‘The conduct of history in International Relations’: nonlinear, multilinear, familiar, and unfamiliar.

56 Sen, Amartya, ‘What do we want from a theory of justice?’, The Journal of Philosophy, 103:5 (2006), p. 216 Google Scholar.

57 Hunter, ‘The history of philosophy and the persona of the philosopher’. For a discussion of the limits of historical approaches that presuppose a transcendent rationality and the advantages of an ethics of empiricism, see Haakonssen, Knud, ‘The philosophy of a persona’, History of European Ideas, 40:1 (2013), pp. 116121 Google Scholar.

58 For an early formulation of the criticism of antiquarianism directed to Cambridge School contextualism, see Tarlton, Charles, ‘Historicity, meaning and revisionism in the study of political thought’, History and Theory, 12 (1973), pp. 307328 Google Scholar.

59 See the Special Issue onIntervention and the Ordering of the Modern World’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013)Google Scholar. For an early attempt to historicise intervention, see Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention.

60 Macmillan, John, ‘Intervention and the ordering of the modern world’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013), pp. 10391056 Google Scholar.

61 Doyle, Michael W., The Question of Intervention: John Stuart Mill and the Responsibility to Protect (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

62 Varouxakis, Georgios, Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 86100 Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., pp. 80–2.

64 Doyle, , The Question of Intervention, p. xii Google Scholar.

65 Niesen, Peter, ‘The “West divided”? Bentham and Kant on law and ethics in foreign policy’, in David Chandler and Volker Heins (eds), Rethinking Ethical Foreign Policy: Pitfalls, Possibilities and Paradoxes (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 93115 Google Scholar.

66 Ibid., p. 111.

67 Ibid. For another anachronistic reading of Bentham, this time as a supporter – for supposedly humanitarian reasons – of British military intervention in the Greek War of Independence (1821–32), see Bass, Gary J., Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Vintage Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

68 Conway, Stephen, ‘Bentham on peace and war’, Utilitas, 1:1 (1989), pp. 82101 Google Scholar.

69 Lawson, George, ‘The eternal divide? History and International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 18:2 (2012), pp. 207209 Google Scholar.

70 This is evident also in the Special Issue, ‘Interventionism as Practice’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 9:4 (2015)Google Scholar. Specifically, see the introductory piece, Olsson, Christian, ‘Interventionism as practice: On “ordinary transgressions” and their routinization’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 9:4 (2015), pp. 425441 Google Scholar. For a recent statement of the ‘practice turn’ in IR and an introduction to sociological practice theory, see Adler, Emmanuel and Pouliot, Vincent, ‘International practices’, International Theory, 3:1 (2011), pp. 136 Google Scholar.

71 For a recent collection of essays that ‘take seriously the “contextualist” challenge’ while thinking that ‘a close reading of classic texts can enhance our understanding of intervention’, see Recchia, Stefano and Welsh, Jennifer M., Just and Unjust Military Intervention: European Thinkers from Vitoria to Mill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar. The extent to which the 12 contributors succeed in keeping this promise varies, of course.

72 Rosenau, James N., ‘Intervention as a scientific concept’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 13:2 (1969), p. 161 Google Scholar. For definitions along these lines, see Vincent, R. J., Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), p. 8 Google Scholar; Recchia, and Welsh, , Just and Unjust Military Intervention, p. 5.Google Scholar, fn. 15.

73 Finnemore, , The Purpose of Intervention, p. 10 Google Scholar.

74 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

75 Devetak, , ‘A rival enlightenment?’, pp. 445446 Google Scholar. See also Vigneswaran, Darshan and Quirk, Joel, ‘Past masters and modern inventions: Intellectual history as critical theory’, International Relations, 24:2 (2010), pp. 107131 Google Scholar. Michel de Certeau argued that ‘the international’ is a form of ‘historiography’, a way of writing history. de Certeau, Michel, L’Ecriture de l’Histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1975)Google Scholar.

76 On the importance of treating ‘the international’ as a political space and not a reified and de-historicised ontology, see also Walters, William, Critical Issues in Global Politics: Governmentality: Critical Encounters (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2012), pp. 100102 Google Scholar; Dean, Mitchell, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 2010), pp. 87, 238 Google Scholar; Guillaume, ‘Historicising the international’. On a seminal account of critical geopolitics, see Tuathail, Gearóid Ó, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

77 Devetak, Richard, ‘Historiographical foundations of modern international thought: Histories of the European states-system from Florence to Göttingen’, History of European Ideas, 41:1 (2014b), p. 4 Google Scholar. See also Mazower, Mark, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (London: Penguin, 2013), pp. 1423 Google Scholar.

78 Keene, Edward, ‘International hierarchy and the origins of the modern practice of intervention’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013), pp. 10771079 Google Scholar.

79 Ibid., p. 1078. A similar position is upheld in Lawson, George and Tardelli, Luca, ‘The past, present, and future of intervention’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013), p. 1236 Google Scholar.

80 On the importance of this historical period of transformation in Europe (that is, the sattelzeit), see Koselleck, Reinhart, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985)Google Scholar. John Pocock followed Koselleck in defining this period as a ‘threshold period’ for modernity. Pocock, J. G. A., The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Lately, various studies are building on Kosellecks’s original argument and adding historical evidence of the emergence of ‘the international’. Among them, Armitage, , Foundations of Modern International Thought, p. 30 Google Scholar; Devetak, , ‘Historiographical foundations of modern international thought’, pp. 14 Google Scholar.

81 Leira, Halvard, ‘Taking Foucault beyond Foucault: Inter-state governmentality in early modern Europe’, Global Society, 23:4 (2009), p. 489 Google Scholar, fn. 75.

82 Bayly, Christopher A., ‘The first age of global imperialism, c. 1760–1830’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26 (1998), pp. 2847 Google Scholar. For an interesting collection of works on Victorian imperialism, see Bell, Duncan, Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

83 Sluga, Glenda, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

84 Long, David and Schmidt, Brian C., Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

85 See, for example, Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Muthu, Sankar, Enlightenment against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Pitts, Jennifer, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

86 Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society.

87 Reus-Smit, Christian, ‘The concept of intervention’, Review of International Studies, 39:5 (2013), pp. 10571076 Google Scholar.

88 Ibid., p. 1060.

89 Ibid., pp. 1060–2.

90 Ibid., p. 1059.

91 Condren, Conal, Argument and Authority in Early Modern England: The Presupposition of Oaths and Offices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 350 Google Scholar.