ABSTRACT
There must be something distinctive about international relations that generates such grossly varying interpretations of what is believed to be going on at any given point in time. Some of the reasons are obvious. Even though most people do not possess much information about the subject, everyone has an opinion. Yet international relations can encompass extremely complex processes and, for that reason alone, analysts will tend to disagree about how best to capture and package the complexity. But there is more to wildly dissimilar interpretations than simply world polities’ complexity, the deficit in information, and the surplus number of opinions about it. There is also the question of attitudinal predisposition toward various analytical choices. In earlier chapters it has been assumed that a historical structural interpretation of Britain’s systemic leadership in the nineteenth century was one of the least noncontroversial assumptions that could be made. This is not really a safe assumption. There are analysts who refuse to accept the notion that Britain ascended (again) to the peak of the global political economy after 1815 and then proceeded to lose its leading position toward the end of the century. These same analysts even see Britain in a stronger position immediately after World War I than before. Clearly, there are some quite explicit disagreements here.
