Journal of the History of Ideas

Abstract:

This review essay examines the work of four new books that reassess critically the emergence of international relations as a discipline and foreign policy discourse in the twentiethcentury. It argues that, overall, these texts collectively expose connections between power and politics that contemporary disciplinary norms obscure and recover lost or forgotten modes of inquiry that deserve our attention. Overall, the collective portrait they paint of the international historical landscape is significantly richer and more complicated than mainstream accounts of disciplinary history would suggest.