ABSTRACT
The central task of this book is to show how the discipline of history can be of cardinal use to the student of international relations (IR). While many IR scholars know they ‘ought to take history seriously’, they are also loath to do so. Are not historians prone to studying ‘what one [foreign offi ce] clerk said to another?’ or to looking at extremely narrow areas of a state’s activities, such as how Lord Lansdowne (British Foreign Secretary, 1900-1905) helped negotiate the AngloFrench Entente Cordiale in 1904 or how Sir Edward Grey (British Foreign Secretary, 1905-1916) got Britain involved in World War I? Such attention to detail has the effect on many IR scholars of inducing enormous self-doubt or overweening arrogance and disdain in equal measure. How could anyone possibly be interested in such ephemera when we have such huge problems as ‘agency and structure’ or ‘hegemony’ to worry about? Many IR colleagues would complain that not only was
all that history ‘a very long time ago’, but they would also be unclear as to how or why we should care about it. So many of the judgements made by IR scholars rest squarely on the giant shoulders of diplomatic international historians like F. H. Hinsley and countless others who did the spade work in the archives so that they might draw their broad conclusions, and even founded entire theoretical dynasties on such ‘obscure’ work.
