Historical International Relations

"The ambitious four-volume work Historical International Relations edited by Halvard Leira and Benjamin de Carvalho is an important contribution to the literature on international relations and likely to remain a standard collection on the topic for many years. It is comprehensive, well organized and encompasses many of the classic articles in the field by leading European and American scholars. Each of the volumes should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the origins and evolution of theory or practice in the discipline of international relations since the beginning of the 20^th century to the present."

With the appearance of this volume of previously published texts the historical turn in IR has come of age. For me there are two points that stand out  from this marvellous collection. The first is how much excellent historical IR research has been written in the last decade or so, and what an excellent job the editors have done in picking out a strong representative sample of this scholarship. The second is the deep roots of the ‘historical turn’ in IR. Leira and de Carvalho have reminded us of this last point by republishing some important older classics  that deserve to be reread by a new generation of IR scholars.