ABSTRACT

The internationalist paradigm that would dominate thinking about world affairs in the early part of the twentieth century had its origins, within the context of British liberalism, in the peace movement of the nineteenth century. More revolutionary was another alternative to convention, represented by Karl Marx, who opposed the entire system. He and his principal collaborator, Friedrich Engels, have been characterised as the last of a number of thinkers on international affairs in the nineteenth century who placed great emphasis upon the meaning of historical progress. The state, far from providing the basis for international law, organisation and peace, was itself necessarily and by its very nature the enemy of peace. The possibility of war and the threat to the world order towards the end of the century revived interest in several countries in what was to become known as geopolitics.