ABSTRACT
International Relations as a discipline (hereafter referred to as IR) bears the imprint of the historical circumstances in which it was created. It is frequently claimed that the discipline came into being as a result of the shock caused by the First World War. It is true that the first research institutes and dedicated chairs were only established in the years immediately following the war. However, systematic thinking on interstate relations, on a scale unknown in previous history of thought, had already developed during the last third of the nineteenth century.1
