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E. H. Carr and international relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Graham Evans
Graham Evans
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

No-one seriously doubts the importance of E. H. Carr in the history of the study of international relations. The publication of The Twenty Years' “Crisis, 1919–1939, in 1939 marked a turning point in international theory, ending, as it did in Britain, the dominance of the more traditional ‘pro-gressivist’ or ‘idealist’ schools of thought characterized in the writings of, for example, Norman Angell, Bertrand Russell, Alfred Zimmern, Arnold Toynbee, G. Lowes Dickinson and others. The bulk of Carr's work in the field was written in the twenty or so years between 1936 (when he accepted the Woodrow Wilson Chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth) and 1955 (when he accepted a Fellowship at Trinity, his old Cambridge College), and since then his energies have been concentrated on his abiding concern with the history of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, he is still an important figure in the field and although international relations has not been his life' work, his unique contribution to its understanding, ensures him a permanent place in the British tradition of international studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , July 1975 , pp. 77 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1975

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References

page 77 note 1 (London, 1939). All references in this paper are to the revised edition, 1946.

page 77 note 2 See for example Lyon, P., ‘Texts and the Study of International Relations’, Political Studies, xiii (1965), pp. 78–84Google Scholar.

page 77 note 3 Thompson, K. W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (Princeton, New Jersey, 1960), p. 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 78 note 1 The Tiventy Years' Crisiss op. cit. pp. 278 and 282.

page 78 note 2 (London, 1967), p. 43 (Penguin edition).

page 78 note 3 Whittle Johnston, Carr's, ‘E. H. Theory of International Relations: a Critique’,Journal of Politics, xxix (1967), p. 861Google Scholar.

page 79 note 1 The Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cii. vii.

page 79 note 2 Ibid. pp. 67–68.

page 79 note 3 Ibid. p. 102.

page 80 note 1 Ibid, p. 103.

page 80 note 2 International Relations Since the Peace Treaties (London, 1937)Google Scholar. Britain, A. Study in Foreign Policy from Versailles to the Outbreak of War in 1939 (London, 1939)Google Scholar. International Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939 (London, 1947)Google Scholar. This theme is also developed in his articles and lectures. See for example ‘Public Opinion as a Safeguard of Peace’, International Affairs, xv (1936), pp. 846–62Google Scholar, and ‘Honour Among Nations: A Critique of International Cant’, The Fortnightly, cxlv (1939), pp. 489–500Google Scholar.

page 81 note 1 The Twenty Years Crisis, op. cit. pp. 87–88.

page 81 note 2 Ibid. p. 169.

page 81 note 3 Conditions of Peace (London, 1942), p 102.Google Scholar

page 82 note 1 Ibid. pp. 118–24.

page 83 note 1 Nationalism and After (London, 1942), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

page 83 note 2 Johnston, op. cit. p. 861.

page 83 note 3 Ibid. p. 869.

page 84 note 1 The Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cit. p. 81.

page 84 note 2 Review by Carr of Dennis, Lawrence, ‘The Dynamics of War and Revolution,’ International Affairs, xix (1940), p. 161Google Scholar.

page 85 note 1 Nationalism and After, op. eit, pp. 13–16.

page 85 note 2 Ibid, p. 7.

page 86 note 1 Johnston, op. cit. p. 861,

page 87 note 1 The Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cit. p. 50 (emphasis added).

page 87 note 2 “Few historians are as systematic as Carr, either in relating many levels of general and particular explanation, or in making explicit the principles by which these explanations are selected and related to one another”. The Political Sciences (London, 1969), p. 300Google Scholar.

page 88 note 1 The War for Peace, Labour Book Service (London, 1940), pp. 58⁃60Google Scholar.

page 88 note 2 Johnston, op. cit. p. 879.

page 88 note 3 Morgenthau, H. J., ‘The Surrender to the Immanence of Power: E. H.Carr‘ in The Restoration of American Politics (Chicago, 1962), pp. 36–44Google Scholar. Bull, H., “The Twenty Years' Crisis, Thirty Years On’, International Journal, xxiv (1969), pp. 625–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 88 note 4 The Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cit. p. 89.

page 89 note 5 Ibid. p. 100, “Since we can neither moralise power nor expel power from politics, we are faced with a dilemma which cannot be completely resolved”.

page 90 note 1 Ibid. p. 157 n.

page 90 note 2 Ibid. p. 162, “There is a world community for the reason (and for no other) that people talk, and within certain limits, behave as if there were a world community”.

page 90 note 3 Ibid. p. 161, “The constant intrusion, or potential intrusion, of power renders almost meaningless any conception of equality between members of the international community”.

page 91 note 4 The third way of dealing with this is of course to assume that it does not exist as a problem. Carr maintains that the realist position does just this: it denies a place to morality in relations between states. “The realist view that no ethical standards are applicable to relations between states can be traced from Machiavelli through Spinoza and Hobbes to Hegel, in whom it found its most finished and thorough-going expression”. Ibid. p. 153.

page 91 note 5 Ibid. p. 167.

page 92 note 1 Ibid. p. 168.

page 92 note 2 ‘The negotiations which led to the Munich agreement of September 29th, 1938, were the nearest approach in recent years to the settlement of a major international issue by a procedure of peaceful change. The element of power was present. The element of morality was also present in the form of a common recognition by the powers, who effectively decided the issue, of a criterion applicable to the dispute: the principle of national self-determination’. The Twenty Years' Crisis 1939 edition, p. 282. (This passage is not found in the revised edition of 1946.)

page 93 note 1 The Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cit. p. 97.

page 94 note 1 Ibid. pp. 100–1,

page 95 note 1 Ibid. p. 93.

page 95 note 2 (London, 1946).

page 95 note 3 (London, 1951).

page 95 note 4 (London, 1961).

page 95 note 5 The Soviet Impact on the Western World, op. cit. p. 116.

page 96 note 1 Brecht, A., Political Theory, The Foundations of Twentieth Century Thought (Princeton, 1959), p. 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 96 note 2 Carsten Holbraad, looking at the ideas of the European Concert current in Germany and Britain in the nineteenth century, draws out three strands which he calls “conservative”, “balance of power‘” and “progressive”. The Concert of Europe; A Study in German and British International Theory, 181J-1914 (London, 1970), p. 8Google Scholar. Carr's theory of balance is “progressive” in the sense that it is concerned with reform and progress in the international order. See Twenty Years' Crisis, op. cit. chap. 14, ‘The Prospects of a New International Order’, pp. 224–39; Nationalism and After, op. cit. part 11, ‘The Prospect of Internationalism’, pp. 38–71, and Conditions of Peace, op. cit. chap. 10, ‘The New Europe’, pp. 236–77.

page 97 note 1 For Britain's future role, for example, he advocates either the establishment of a power bloc, or ‘group state’ under its leadership, or joining one of the other Great Powers. “The choice before Great Britain is either to become the nucleus of a constellation of power embracing the British Empire and Commonwealth and extending to Western Europe or else to merge herself in one of the other great constellations.” The Soviet Impact on the Western World, op. at. p. 85.