ABSTRACT
The following is a modest contribution to the history of the discipline known as ‘International Relations’, which I would like to open with a disclaimer: my intention is not to analyse the emergence of this discipline in a global perspective, nor to track its circulation worldwide.1 My focus is much more limited and confined to the Atlantic world. I hasten to say that this has nothing to do with a normative preference or an inarticulate Eurocentric bias; in part, this choice reflects the limitations of my own knowledge of international relations (IR) in contexts with which I am not familiar. It is also related to the very nature of the discipline, which from the outset enshrined in a set of abstract concepts and theories what was a particular European historical experience and vision of the circumambient world.
