ABSTRACT
From a continental European perspective Britain appears, in many respects, to be a ‘little America’. In the UK, we find the biggest and best organized International Relations (IR) community in Europe with the biggest and best annual conference and a unique journal and book publication infrastructure. Compared to the rest of Europe these features are nothing but unique. But British IR is not simply ‘little America’. Indeed, with reference to special characteristics such as the integration of history and theory, the inclusion of fields of international law, international ethics, diplomatic studies, sociology, political theory and philosophy, and a tradition of theoretical pluralism and tolerance, it may be argued that British IR has qualitatively even more to offer than American IR.
