Introduction

The first great debate: myth or reality? This book examines the controversy over the question of whether or not the field of International Relations (IR) experienced what is commonly described as a great debate between opposing groups of scholars identified as idealists and realists. According to the conventional wisdom, this academic debate, which took place during the 1930s and 1940s, constituted the “first great debate” in the history of the field. The story of the first great debate between idealists and realists has become a dominant part of the self-image of the field and has been repeatedly retold in countless textbooks and “state of the discipline” articles, and it has served as the starting point for most of the orthodox disciplinary histories of IR. Recently, however, a new group of revisionist disciplinary historians has challenged the assumption that this debate actually took place. On the basis of new historical research, the authenticity of the idealist–realist debate has been disputed. The revisionists have advanced two controversial claims regarding the so-called first great debate. First, they argue that the scholarship of the interwar period cannot in any meaningful way be characterized as idealistic or utopian. Second, they claim that during the late 1930s and 1940s there was no meaningful intellectual exchange between interwar “idealists” and early self-identified “realists.” The growing consensus among the new cohort of scholars examining the disciplinary history of IR is that the alleged great debate is nothing more than a disciplinary myth (Kahler 1997; Wilson 1998; Schmidt 1998a, 1998b; Ashworth 2002; Thies 2002).