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of International
English School,
Relations
History
and
and
Area
Theory（S
Studies,UGANAMI
Ritsumeikan
）
University
27
© Institute The
The English School, History and Theory1）
SUGANAMI, Hidemi*
Abstract
The purpose of this article is threefold: to give an account of
the origins and development of the English School as a
historically constituted entity; to distil from the writings of some of
its early figures the English School s views about how historical
knowledge relates to the theory and practice of international
relations; and to study the English School s three major historical
works and examine how their contributions relate to the theories of
international relations. In its brief concluding discussion, it
suggests what might be placed on the English School s research
agenda on the theme of history and theory .
Keywords:
English School, history, international theory, rationalism
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol.9, pp.27-50 (2011).
* Professor of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, UK. E-mail address: [email protected]
1） This is a revised version of the paper delivered at a Symposium on International Theory at
the Crossroad: Critical Scrutiny from Western/Non-Western views , held on 23-24 March,
2010, at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. I am grateful to Professors Tsugio Ando and Makoto
Sato for their kind invitation and their hospitality during my stay at the Symposium. I am
also grateful to Professor Kosuke Shimizu, of Ryukoku University, for acting as a discussant
of this paper and for his insightful comments. Thanks are also due to Professor Giorgio Shani of ICU, formerly of Ritsumeikan, and Dr Josuke Ikeda, also of Ritsemeikan for the part
they took in enabling my visit to Kyoto and making it a highly rewarding and very enjoyable
experience. I would also like to thank my former research student, Dr Ching Chang Chen, of
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, for chairing the session in which I delivered my paper.
Afterwards, my Aberystwyth colleague, Andrew Linklater told me that I went far beyond the
allocated time. I am grateful to Dr Chen and my audience for their patience.
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INTRODUCTION
In this paper, I wish to discuss three issues. First, by way of introduction, I want to say a few words about the English School as itself a historical entity and where it is at now. Second, I wish to outline what I have
distilled from my reading of a number of English School authors regarding
historical knowledge and its relation to the study and practice of international relations. Third, I move on to examine important historical accounts
that emanate from the English School regarding the evolution of international society or, more broadly, inter-communal relations and discuss their
relationships to international relations theory. At the end of the paper, I
offer my view on the contribution the English School may make in the future on the theme of history and theory in the study of world politics.
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL AS A HISTORICAL ENTITY
There will be nothing particularly surprising in the claim that the English School is itself a historical entity. It is not my suggestion, however, that
the English School has its history first and then it becomes the historians
task to uncover it and represent it accurately. I mean rather the opposite of
that: the English School has come into existence because people – and by
this I mean International Relations scholars in particular – have been
speaking and writing about it as a discrete entity with its own history.
It is often said that, in order to count as a historical narrative, a story
has to have the beginning, the middle and the end; perhaps more importantly, it has to be about something, some one thing, of which it is a narrative account. There may be some who disagree with this perhaps rather
too rigid a notion of a narrative. However, it is this kind of narrative, or a
linear narrative, that is relevant to the purpose of my argument. For it
leads me to say that we cannot write a historical narrative, unless there is
some unified subject-matter or substance. However, no subject-matter is
present in the world in a pre-formed, pre-packaged way, like sandwiches
on supermarket shelves. The subject-matter comes to be an entity, of
which it is possible to give a historical account, through the very act of story-telling itself.
I am of course not suggesting that those who engage in story-telling
have to be historians by profession. Ordinary people giving accounts of
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their village life – of how it was earlier, what it has gone through, and
where it is at now – contribute to the coming-into-existence of the village
as an entity. By the time professional historians enter the scene, the village may already have come to be a social reality rather than a mere category of analysis. But the historians writing a history of that reality reinforces its continued existence and reproduction into the future.
Nations need their histories, as we all know. Even International Relations (or IR) as an academic pursuit, with a community of scholars taking
part in it, is made possible partly by repeated narration of the community s
origins and evolution. The case of the English School is no exception to
this general rule. It has come into existence as an entity, a social reality,
through repeated acts of narration about its origins and development, its
past, present and future.
As is usually the case with those entities which owe their emergence
to historical recounting, the origins of the English School are a matter of
some dispute. However, even to think of it as specifically a dispute is to
buy into the idea that there are real origins of the English School concerning which there are more, or less, true representations. It is better to say
that competing stories are told about how the English School emerged –
depending, among other things, on how the narrators want to position
themselves in relation to the English School.2)
One such account suggests that the origins of the English School are
found in the Department of International Relations at the London School
of Economics headed by C. A. W. Manning and comprising his former pupils, such as Geoffrey Goodwin, Fred Northedge, and Alan James, plus two
eminent scholars, Martin Wight and Hedley Bull, whom Manning had appointed from the outside to join his teaching team. Together, it is said, they
formed a close-knit intellectual community whose main focus was the
study of the anarchical society of states as an institutional framework of
world politics (Wilson 1989).
Another account claims, however, that the origins of the English
2) I was first alerted to the importance of the distinction between competition and dispute
by F. S. Northedge and M. D. Donelan (1971), International Disputes: The Political Aspects
(London: Europa, 1971). In a competition, contestants have irreconcilable desires; in a dispute, they argue about which of them has the right to possess what they desire, or which of
their claims is true. A competition is a conflict of desires; a dispute is a conflict of claims
about justice and truth.
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School are found in the creation of the so-called British Committee on the
Theory of International Politics, initially headed by the historian, Herbert
Butterfield. Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson are the key figures of the Committee and hence of this story of the English School
(Dunne 1998).
Although Roy Jones (1981), who first referred to the English School by
name, had Manning and his associates in mind as its members, and knew
little about the British Committee, there is no denying that a number of key
texts of the English School are those of the Committee and of its individual
members. They include: Diplomatic Investigations edited by Butterfield and
Wight (1966), The Expansion of International Society edited by Bull and
Watson (1984), The Systems of States and Power Politics, two posthumously
edited collections of essays by Wight (1977, 1978), and The Evolution of International Society by Watson (1992). Undoubtedly, the British Committee
was an important site of what has come to be seen as the evolution of the
English School research agenda and collaboration. This story is recounted in
Dunne (1998) and, in more detail, in Vigezzi (2005).
This does not mean that the other story, which locates the origins of the
English School in Manning s work at the LSE, is to be rejected. There is no
doubt either that Manning had a formative influence on the way IR has
been taught at that institution and elsewhere in the UK (Suganami 2001).
Perhaps I should put a little footnote here. It is sometimes wondered
whether International Relations is an academic discipline . Manning was
preoccupied with this question (1951a, 1951b, 1954). But what he was asking was a pedagogical question, namely, whether IR could have enough intellectual substance and social function to justify being taught as a university undergraduate programme leading to an award of a Bachelor of Arts
degree in that subject. He was asking whether universities should offer an
undergraduate degree course taught by a team of scholars specialising in
the study of international relations. His answer, which involved much consideration on his part, was an unsurprising yes – he was, after all, the head
of an IR Department – and he dedicated his life to making an undergraduate degree programme in IR intellectually respectable and socially useful
according to his own understanding of how the contemporary world worked.
Manning s understanding was based on his training as a student of
law and jurisprudence and on his experience of the First World War, the
League of Nations, the Second World War, the Cold War, and decoloniza-
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tion and its aftermath, especially regarding the last of which he developed
a strongly Euro-centric legalistic view (Suganami 2001). He was a firm believer in the importance of taking legal obligations seriously as a basis of
international order (Manning 1975). The core of the undergraduate IR programme, as Manning set it up, was the idea of international society as a
framework of world politics, anarchical in structure, yet capable of creating order and ensuring some degree of justice, through the working of its
key institutions. Hedley Bull s The Anarchical Society (1977), which is arguably the single most important text emanating from the English School,
is an elaboration of this central theme.
The two accounts I have just outlined concerning the origins of the
English School are not alternative hypotheses, from which one must be
chosen as the true version; rather they point to two segments of what has
now come to be seen as a single reality known in many parts of the world
as the English School.
Since the work of the school has come to be known in distant parts of
the world, I should point out that the name the English School may be
misleading. It should not lead people into supposing that the school represents the English or British way of thinking about international relations.
There are many British IR scholars who are critical of or not even interested in what the English School scholars have to say. The English School
was perhaps a dominant force in the teaching of IR in the UK in the
1970s, but now, even in Britain, it is more common to consider the body of
work coming from that school as one among a number of alternatives in
the study of world politics. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that the
English School, or those, such as Ian Clark and Andrew Linklater, who
have come under the direct or indirect influence of its early figures, such
as Bull and Wight in particular, have produced a distinct and significant
body of work and continue to do so.3)
Those who are associated with the early history of the English School,
or its founding members as some would call them, include: C. A. W. Manning, Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, Adam Watson, Alan James and John Vincent. Herbert Butterfield is added to this list by some on account of his
role in the British Committee (see Dunne 1998).
3) Ian Clark s and Andrew Linklater s works are found in http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/interpol/
staff/academic/iic/ and http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/interpol/staff/academic/adl/.
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I think of this close-knit grouping of scholars as a kind of Gemeinschaft. It consists of teachers and pupils (e.g., Manning and James; Bull
and Vincent; and Butterfield and Watson); mentors and mentees (e.g., Butterfield and Wight; and Wight and Bull); colleagues in the same university
departments (e.g., Manning, Wight, Bull and James; and James and Vincent); and members of an exclusive club, the British Committee (e.g., Butterfield, Wight, Watson, Bull and Vincent). But this initially Gemeinschaftlike community of scholars took a globalizing turn at the end of the last
century and a new English School was born as a kind of Gesellschaft. This
has to do with Barry Buzan s call in 1999, as he put it, to reconvene the
English School (Buzan 2001).
In characterizing his move as the reconvening of the English School,
what Buzan had in mind was the resurrection of the British Committee
and its practice of holding seminars regularly to discuss the members papers on various aspects of world politics. But, of course, this was to be done
in a globalized age of the Internet and frequent large-scale international
conferences. What was convened was nothing like a replica of the small
and exclusive British Committee but a global network of likeminded scholars all interested in developing the study of world politics beyond what the
founding figures of the old English School had done.
In addition to this Gesellschaft-like global network of scholars, however, there were also a new generation of scholars who grew out of the Gemeinschaft of the old English School after the untimely deaths of Hedley
Bull and John Vincent. These younger scholars included Andrew Hurrell,
one of the last of Bull s students and now himself the Montague Burton
Professor at Oxford University; Tim Dunne, a former doctoral student of
Hurrell s at Oxford, now a professor at the University of Queensland in
Australia, and Nick Wheeler, Dunne s close collaborator at one time, now a
professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University.
The English School as it now stands consists of these two strands, the
Gesellschaft-like global network and a smaller number of scholars who
grew out of the Gemeinschaft-like old English School. The latter group
would have continued to produce a distinct body of writings, regardless of
Buzan s call to reconvene the English School, but has now become part of
the worldwide movement to go beyond the old English School.
That is where, in my story, the English School is currently at. I now
want to move, without further delay, to my second topic: how the English
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School writers, by which I mean some of its earlier figures, saw the relationships between historical knowledge, on the one hand, and the study
and practice of international relations, on the other. Here I develop my argument from a study I conducted some years ago when I was writing a
book with Andrew Linklater on the English School (Linklater and Suganami 2006, 84-97).
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL ON HISTORY AND IR
The English School is united in acknowledging the importance of historical knowledge to the study of international relations. This, of course,
does not mean that scholars outside of the school (even across the Atlantic) have attached little importance to history: think of Hans Morgenthau
or Ned Lebow, among many others.4) Neither does it mean that everyone
associated with the English School has made an extensive use of historical
knowledge in their writings. Manning did not. He used metaphors and
analogies extensively, but hardly any historical examples, to illustrate his
argument, which alienated some more empirically-minded scholars, but
not the more conceptually-oriented. I count myself among the latter as I
learnt much from his book, The Nature of International Society (1975) and
got to know his way of thinking quite closely by attending his lectures on
philosophical aspects of international relations which he continued to deliver at the LSE into the early 70s.
Even for Manning, however, there was no point in denying the linkage between International Relations and International History (1951a:17)
and international history is, for the student of international relations, essential underpinner number one (1954:44). By an underpinner , Manning
meant a body of knowledge which gives IR its foundation. Moreover, Butterfield and Wight, unlike Manning, were historians. For the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, led by the first two, history
was not only a foundation on which to build a theory, but also a main avenue through which to explore what the theory of international politics
might possibly comprise.
Let me explain. For Wight, in particular, the theory of international
politics , or what he preferred to call international theory , was a body of
4) On Morgenthau, see Watson (1992: 9). Lebow s recent works include Lebow (2003, 2008).
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questions and answers about the nature of interstate relations which has
crystallized over many centuries to form historically repeated patterns of
thought. These included what he called the Hobbesian, Grotian and Kantian traditions – all of which, however, are unfortunate misnomers as I
hint at in relation to the first two traditions and Andrew Linklater expounds more fully in relation to the third in our book (Linklater and Suganami 2006: 35, note 13 and ch. 5). Wight also called these three traditions
realism, rationalism and revolutionism, respectively (1991).
For those who are unfamiliar with the English School terminology, I
should add that rationalism in Wight s sense derives from the Lockean
idea that even in the state of nature human beings can follow reason, act
rationally, and behave reasonably towards one another (Wight 1991:1314). By extension, rationalism in international thought points to the capacity of sovereign states to coexist under anarchy and develop properly
societal relations. Vattel ([1758]1916), a well-known international lawyer
of the 18th century, is an archetypal rationalist, but rationalism, itself a
broad spectrum of international thought, can be seen to stretch to Hobbes
at one end and Kant at the other (Suganami 1989:ch 1; Linklater and Suganami 2006:ch 5). What historically contingent conditions have enabled
states to realise their potentiality for coexistence and co-operation, and
what other conditions must be met to enhance the extent to which this is
realised in the contemporary world, is a central concern of the rationalist
research project, which is at once sociological and normative.
I shall touch on this theme again later in this paper, but let me, for
now, return to the main theme of this section. The relationship between
historical knowledge, on the one hand, and the study and practice of international relations, on the other, is a complex one, and the early figures of
the English School exhibited a wide variety of views on this issue.
First of all, according to Butterfield (1972:338), Wight (1977:16), and
Bull (2000a:253), approaches to the study of international relations which
are a-temporal must be considered inadequate because its subject-matter is
intrinsically historical. According to this way of thinking, one important way
to understand the present world is to locate it as the latest phase in the unfolding of world history along certain discernible trends. As I shall discuss
later, this approach has been followed by Barry Buzan and Richard Little in
their major work, International Systems in World History (2000).
Second, according to both Watson (1992:1) and Bull (2000a:253), em-
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pirical studies of international relations, even by IR specialists, are inadequate if they ignore the idiographic dimension of their subject-matter.
That is to say, students of international relations must pay attention to
the uniqueness of each entity and each event they examine rather than
simply seek generalizations.
Third, according to both Bull (2000a:253, 254) and Watson (1992:319),
it is not wrong to search for historical generalizations; but we must be
aware that in order to arrive at a sound generalization, the scope of investigation needs to be wide, and that there may be differences, as well as
similarities, in the cases compared.
Fourth, while drawing attention to the usefulness of historical knowledge in enabling us to decipher the direction of human social development,
Wight (1977:191-92) and Bull (1977: 255-56) warn that historical knowledge
not only enables, but also constrains, our speculations about future options.
They suspect that in our thinking about international relations, there may
be little or nothing that is radically new (Bull 1969:37; 1977:255-6; Wight
1991:6). Bull (1977:275) therefore speaks of the tyranny of the concepts , the
difficulty we find in thinking outside the historically dominant conceptual
framework. Wight even suggests that historical knowledge does not necessarily provide a good guide to political action (1977:191-92).
Fifth, Wight (1966:26) and Bull (2000b:232-3; 244) believe that the
history of international politics can be written as a story of recurrence and
repetition, but that in writing a history of modern international society, it
is also possible to discern some signs of progress towards a more rational
world. They hold that historical narratives about world politics are intertwined with the theories (or interpretations) about the fundamental characteristics of world politics (Wight 1966:33; Bull 2000a:253, 254).
As this summary shows, the English School writers views on history
and its relation to the study and practice of international relations are
quite diverse. However, their thinking crystallizes around two general
propositions, each with a main clause and a qualification:
(1) that generalizing attempts in the study of international relations have
serious limitations but may yield some knowledge; and
(2) that historical knowledge offers much understanding about international relations but not without limitations.
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When their mind is focused on stressing the limits of generalizing attempts, they become what they used to be well-known for – staunch critics
of North American scientific approach in IR (in what is commonly known
in the IR community as the second great debate in the disciplinary history
of IR) (Bull 1969). When they nevertheless pursue a generalizing path,
they engage in the historical sociology of states systems of the sort Wight
(1977) and Watson (1992) attempted and seek historical analogies and
patterns of international thought as did Wight (1991) most famously. They
attach much importance to historical understandings, but when they nevertheless draw attention to the limits of historical knowledge, they argue,
as did Bull (1977: 275), that we must emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of the concepts that have shaped our world so far and warn, as did
Wight (1977: 191-92), that good historians are not necessarily good diplomats or politicians.
They are also united in supposing that there are two kinds of theory in
the study of international relations. One is a theory of international relations in the sense of inductive generalizations derived from historical facts.
Despite some fairly fundamental criticisms (Waltz 1979; Bhaskar 1998,
2000), this does seem to be one way in which the word theory is frequently
used.5) The other is a body of general propositions about international relations which have accumulated over a long period in pronouncements by
writers and practitioners on the subject of interstate relations (Wight 1991).
Of these two kinds of theory, the former is based on the idea that historical knowledge provides a material for IR and IR Theory. The latter
searches for examples of theory in the history of international thought and
thought-in-practice. And the English School s central argument is that this
historically accumulated body of general propositions, or what Martin
Wight called international theory , are all of them only partially true
when tested against patterns that emerge in history. That is to say, according the English School, there is no single theory, or body of generalizations,
that exhaustively captures the main features of world politics which history has revealed so far.
World politics, in their view, has some elements best captured by the
realist tradition of thought, some which the rationalist tradition has
5) Hence the term democratic peace theory .
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drawn special attention to, and some which fits the revolutionist representation. Hence the claim by Little (2000) and Buzan (2001) that the English
School perspective is commendably pluralistic. However, there is no doubt
in my mind that the founding figures of the English School were particularly sympathetic to the rationalist depiction of the world. Wight (1991)
characterised this as the via media of international thought and expressed
his growing sympathy towards it. For Manning (1975), Bull (1977), James
(1986a) and Vincent (1974), this depiction captures what is in effect the
enduring constitutional structure of world politics which has its historical
origins in Europe and has now come to encompass the whole world
through imperialism and de-colonization (Bull and Watson 1984).
Given the background I have portrayed in this section, it is unsurprising to find that different kinds of historical work have emerged from the
English School, old and new. In the next section, I want to examine three
prominent examples, each reflecting one or more of School s concerns and
orientations.
THE ENGLISH SCHOOL’S HISTORICAL STUDIES AND THEIR RELATION
TO THEORY
A first on my list is a comparative study of past and present international societies in search of some limited generalizations. Watson s Evolution of International Society (1992), inspired by Wight s (1977) idea of the
comparative historical sociology of states-systems, represents this type. A
second is a study of the expansion of international society, represented by
Bull and Watson s edited volume (1984) under that very title. A third is a
study of human inter-communal relationships which traces its evolution
historically and explains the present as the latest phase in the process.
This is exemplified by Buzan and Little s International Systems in World
History (2000). However, following Watson s warning (1992:319) that
knowledge derived from a limited period of history does not give a whole
picture of what the world of interacting communities is really like, Buzan
and Little s study covers an astounding 60,000 years of the history of human inter-communal relationships. In the following I shall outline these
three works and consider what relationships they have with what we
broadly call International Relations Theory.
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THE DYNAMICS OF STATES-SYSTEMS INDUCTIVELY ARRIVED AT
One of the questions Wight wanted to investigate under the rubric of
the historical sociology of states systems was this: is there a case for saying that a states-system can only maintain its existence on the principle of
the balance of power, that the balance of power is inherently unstable, and
that sooner or later the system will end in a monopoly of power by an empire (Wight 1977:34)?
To investigate this question, Watson compared a large number of
states-systems in his book. He discarded Wight s distinction between systems of independent states, suzerain systems and empires, and included in
the category of states-systems any system comprising a number of diverse
communities of people or political entities (Watson 1992:13). He subdivided his examples into (1) ancient states-systems, of which ten cases were
investigated from Sumer to the Islamic system, (2) the European international society, starting from Medieval Europe and ending in the nineteenth century Concert of Europe, and (3) the global international society
of the twentieth century.
Watson (1990:105) noted that in any given states-system there are
tendencies to move away from multiple independences in the direction of
hegemony, dominion and empire. This was the tendency that Wight
(1977:43-4) saw in his limited examples. However, Watson also noticed
that there are counter-pressures towards greater autonomy that make empires and dominions loosen and break up. According to Watson, in the
practical operation of the states systems ... the midpoint [where the two
pressures balance each other] tends to be a varying degree of autonomy or
domestic independence, ordered by a degree of external hegemony or authority, individual or joint (1990:106; see also Watson 1992: ch. 12).
With this understanding, Watson speculated on the future of the international system in the aftermath of the demise of the Soviet Union.
What he considered likely was the development of joint hegemony, or concert, with the United States as the leader. Such an arrangement might be
resented by some states, but, Watson argued, it may strengthen international order especially if the major powers conduct an active diplomatic
dialogue with other states and respond to their needs (1992:323). This story is somewhat reminiscent of, but subtly and in fact quite significantly
different from, what Kenneth Waltz (1993) said about the same topic. Here
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I wish to enter a few observations on Watson s line.
First, the inductive generalization Watson arrived at historically to
the effect that the states-systems tend to witness the emergence of a degree of external hegemony, individual or joint, is too vague to enable us to
predict the shape of the future.
Second, if and when joint hegemony or concert of great powers led by
the United States does materialize, we can have an understanding of that
development to the extent that we can explain what brought it about in
the particular historical circumstances, but not on the basis of a vague
generalization that Watson had formulated. To understand a particular
case in history, we need to seek historical knowledge regarding that case.
To say that the case fits a general pattern is only to point out that the case
we are looking at is not unfamiliar; but to say that something is familiar is
not the same as explaining it (Suganami 2008a).
Third, Watson s view that, if and when the concert of great powers
emerges, weaker powers may resent it and that therefore, in order to contribute to international order, great powers must respond to their demands is intelligible as good practical advice to the extent that we share
his rationalist sense of what tends to work in human social relationships.
Let me try to integrate these three observations. If formulating inductive generalizations based on what history teaches us is one form of activity that goes by the name of theory in the study of international relations,
Watson has made a modest contribution towards it. His generalization
points to the likelihood that the states system will continue to be reproduced, with one or more members dominating the scene. But this generalization is too vague to offer us a more precise prediction and, in any case,
historically specific explanation will be called for to make sense of what
actually happens. What is interesting about Watson s argument, however,
is his rationalist leaning in his prescription concerning the conditions of
international order.
Watson s prescription embodies an international theory of the rationalist variety, but, it may be noted, the relevance of his prescription to the
future world is supported, though implicitly, by his inductively arrived at
historical generalization, or a theory of international politics, according to
which we will continue to live in a world of states dominated by one or
more of them. In short, his prescriptive stance (or theory ) is underpinned
by his inductive generalization (or theory ) which, in turn, needs to be sup-
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plemented by history to produce an understanding of particular cases.
THE EXPANSION OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
I referred earlier to a question Wight had raised regarding the apparent tendency of states-systems to end in an empire. Another important
question that Wight (1977: 33-4) drew attention to in his historical-sociology project was this: all past states-systems arose against the background
of cultural homogeneity; how far is this a necessary condition for the effective functioning of a states-system; and, by implication, what are the prospects for the institutions of current international society, which have their
origins in the European civilization, now that they have come to encompass the whole world, comprising a variety of cultures?
This was the central theme of Bull and Watson s book, The Expansion
of International Society (1984). They acknowledged that, compared with
the European international society of the nineteenth century, the global
international society of the latter part of the twentieth century lacked solidarity because of a number of factors, cultural heterogeneity amongst
them. The primary conclusions of this collaborative volume, however, were
(1) that, although new entrants to international society have sought to reshape existing rules to reduce discriminations against them, they have accepted the society s institutional framework; (2) that they have had to do
so because they could not do without it even in their mutual relations; and
(3) that the leading elements of all contemporary societies have accepted a
cosmopolitan culture of modernity upon which rests international legal,
diplomatic and administrative institutions (Bull and Watson 1984:430-35).
I wish to explore two questions in relation to these conclusions. First,
is it the English School s contention that the institutions of international
society, in broad terms, are a rational, functional, and pragmatically necessary means required for the coexistence and co-operation of independent
political communities?
Bull and Watson s answer seems to be in the affirmative. This is implicit in their view that the states of Asia and Africa perceived strong interests in accepting the rules and institutions of international society because they could not do without them even in their relations with one
another (1984:433-34). That states need to accept positive international
law, originating in the West, in order for them to coexist and co-operate at
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all is also a strongly held belief on the part of Manning. For him, the acceptance of the binding nature of positive international law is a situationally generated pragmatic inevitability (1972:328). James was even more
outspoken on this point. He wrote:
To me it seems that when independent political units come into regular contact with each other certain requirements present themselves
almost as a matter of logical necessity: some rules are necessary for
the regulation of their intercourse, and also, therefore, some agreement on how these rules are to be established or identified; there
must be some means of official communication, and with it an understanding that official agents must be personally respected and privileged; and if the collectivity of units is deemed to form a society this
carries with it the concept of membership, and hence the necessity for
some criterion whereby this political unit is identified as a member
and that not. These requirements would seem to be valid whatever
the cultural complexion or geographical location of the political entities who establish or later join an international society (1986b:466).
This line of thinking is in effect an application to the international
sphere of H. L. A. Hart s (1961:189-95) well-known argument about what
he called the minimum content of natural law . The same source also inspired Bull s The Anarchical Society (1977).
Hart s argument is basically that, given the characteristics of human
beings, their wish to survive and prosper, and the nature of the environment
in which they conduct their social relations, it is rational, or pragmatically
necessary, that social norms governing all societies are found to have a few
basic principles in common; and that these are the sorts which used to be
called natural law principles, such as you must not kill , you must not
steal , and you must keep your promise . In short, basic human needs are
the rationale behind the emergence of societies regulated by similar basic
principles. However, as is often noted in relation to functionalism in social
science, what is rational, functional and pragmatically necessary does not
always happen and so, when it does happen, we need to show how the outcome was brought about. That was the rationale behind the project which
ended in the production of The Expansion of International Society.
This leads me to my second question. Is the English School s charac-
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terization of the historical process of the expansion of European international society a success story of what they believe in any case to be a rational way of conducting international relations?
The answer has to be yes . And some writers have reacted to this aspect of the English School with considerable disdain. I am here thinking of
Professor Onuma (2000:5-6) who is well-known for his advocacy of what he
calls an inter-civilizational approach to international law and also a
younger scholar, Dr Shogo Suzuki of Manchester University. I am much
impressed by these scholars works. Suzuki s book, Civilization and Empire (2009) gives a much more detailed account than either Gerrit Gong or
I have done in our respective chapters (Gong 1984; Suganami 1984) included in The Expansion of International Society. Moreover, in an article I
wrote for a Festschrift for Onuma, I express my appreciation of his work as
a jurist as showing one way in which to transcend the limitations of the
English School work (Suganami 2008b).
In my assessment, however, there is much that is common between the
English School s position and the lines taken by Onuma and Suzuki. For one
thing, neither of these two scholars denies that the West succeeded in
spreading the institutions of international society, such as, in particular, international law and diplomacy (or a system of resident embassies). Nor, in
my view, would they characterise a society of states governed by international law and diplomacy as an irrational way of organizing mankind.
However, what Onuma (1993) stresses is the undeniable historical
role that international law played in justifying Western powers colonial
conquests. He (2000) wants those who write a history of international society and its law to take note of this in their narratives.
Suzuki s (2009) reaction to what he sees in the English School history
is similar. His basic argument is that a story of the expansion of international society is inadequate if it neglects its coercive aspects and portrays
the spread of the institutions of European international society as having
been inevitable because of their rationality and necessity for the coexistence and co-operation between states. He stresses that the society of supposedly civilized Western nations acted in an uncivilized manner towards
those outside of their society and that, in the special case of Japan, it
quickly learnt to behave in an uncivilized way towards its neighbouring
countries less civilized than Japan according to the Western standard.
Clearly, international society must be judged not only by the advantages
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it has brought to its members but also by what it has done towards its outsiders and denied to its non-members.
It does not follow from this, however, that the English School s narrative should be countered by Sino-centric or Japan-o-centric ones, for example. If the historical account of the expansion of international society given
by the English School is closely intertwined with their rationalist international theory, then counter-narratives to the English School history should
be explored in the traditions outside rationalism, that is, in the realist and
revolutionist traditions, as well as any other traditions of political thought
found outside the West.
How does a Marxist explanation of world history (and the globalization
of capitalism in particular) relate to the English School s narrative of the expansion of international society led by its great powers? How does Foucaultinspired history of liberal violence challenge the English School narrative?
How do various strands of Islam explain where we were at centuries ago
and how we have come to where we have come to wherever that may be? Is
there a narrative of world history, beginning at some earlier point and ending in the present, which reflects, say, a Confucian view of the world?
A comparative study of world historical narratives or what, after Hayden White (1973), I might call Meta-World-History will be an interesting
project to pursue. Such a study will reflect the English School s view of
history and its relation to theory – namely that historical interpretations
and international theory, or theories, are closely intertwined (Linklater
and Suganami 2006:95). If, as Paul Veyne (1984: 118-19) suggests, theory
for a historian is a summary of the plot that shapes his or her narrative,
then, clearly, world history and international theory are inseparable.
THE UNFOLDING OF WORLD HISTORY
This brings me to my final section, in which I wish to add a few words
about Buzan and Little s book, International Systems in World History (2000).
Of the diverse views expressed by English School authors on the relationship between historical knowledge and the study and practice of international relations, it is primarily the warning not to generalize from a
small number of cases, and the idea that historical knowledge may help us
understand the present and the future, that formed the central rationale
behind Buzan and Little s study. They are critical of the existing IR dis-
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course, based almost exclusively on observations about the Westphalian
states-system, and, more specifically, of Kenneth Waltz s (1979) neo-realism. Their determination to break from imprisonment in our own time led
them to write a book even larger in scale than Watson s.
One key move they make, in their attempt to transcend the limitations of the Westphalia-based IR, is to define international systems very
broadly. Thus, empires are included under the rubric as a hierarchical international system. What they call pre-international systems consist of
bands, tribes, clans, and perhaps chiefdoms. Economic international systems typically involve tribes, empires, city-states, clans, and early forms of
firms. And full international systems , encompassing military-political,
economic and socio-cultural exchange, may consist of like units, such as
city-states or national states, or unlike units, such as empires, city-states
and barbarian tribes (Buzan and Little 2000:6, 95, 101, 102).
The narrative that they construct is about how the geographical size
of socio-cultural, economic and military-political systems gradually expanded, causing the progressive merging of what had been distinct regional systems, and resulting in the formation of the contemporary global system (2000:109-11). Buzan and Little (2000: 380-82) point out, however,
that economic systems have tended to cover wider geographical regions
than military-political systems – as trading could take place between distant partners too far away from each other to engage in war, given the interaction capacities available to them especially in earlier periods. This,
they say, points to the relative autonomy of the economic from the military-political, indicating the need to understand the interplay between
them to make sense of international relations.
As to the present, the various components of Buzan and Little s narrative are all quite familiar: (1) the sharp disparity between the zone of
peace, comprising powerful industrialized democracies, and the zone of
war, containing much weaker modern and premodern states, and the domination of the latter zone by the former; (2) the obsolescence of great power
war and a shift from military-political to economic processes as the dominant form of interaction in the international system; (3) a possible environmental catastrophe; (4) the emergence of post-sovereign states most
clearly in the EU; (5) the rise of a variety of non-state, non-territorial, actors against the background of the increased stability in states territorial
boundaries; (6) the lack of clarity in the number of the existing poles of
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power; (7) the survival of the capitalist system through a series of crises;
(8) thickening of the international rules, norms and institutions especially
in the economic sphere; and (9) possible qualitative change in the economic, societal and political features of the international system brought about
by the ever expanding use of the Internet (2000: ch.16).
Buzan and Little treat these components judiciously and construct a
tentative picture which works well as a synoptic account of the postmodern international system. This is perhaps the first systematic attempt by
those associated with the English School movement to analyse the shape
of what Bull (1977:20-2, 276-81) had called a global political system
which he earlier saw emerging in addition to the traditional framework of
the society of sovereign states.
The book s main contribution, however, is its narrative of human inter-communal relationships from as far back as we can go, through the
middle, to the end where we are at now. The present is to be understood as
the latest instalment of what world history has revealed so far and the
knowledge of the past is presented as a guide to making sense of the
present and considering the future. It is partly for these reasons that, for
the English School more widely, historical studies of international, or inter-communal, relations are an important means by which to understand
contemporary international relations.
The content of the English School historical narrative, as I argued in
relation to Bull and Watson s volume, reflects their rationalist leaning.
Watson s suggestion for international order in the post-Cold War era
which he offers at the end of his own panoramic view of states systems
also reflects his rationalism. Buzan and Little s book, however, does not exhibit the same tendency.
This has partly to do with the fact that Buzan and Little follow a pluralistic stance which they consider the English School to be advocating.
This, they say (2000: 43-7), encourages the analyst to see the world as exhibiting multiple characteristics, captured by the realist image of the system of states, the rationalist model of the society of states, and the revolutionist idea of a world society. Moreover, it is not Buzan and Little s
purpose to offer a prescription regarding the conditions that need to be
met for the constitutional framework of the society of states to contribute
to order and justice in the contemporary world.
These, in my view, are the main reasons why I do not have a clear
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sense that I am reading a typically English School book when I read Buzan and Little s contributions. Their book s overriding aim is to offer a set
of correctives to the neo-realist theory of international relations. They do
so by covering a period far more extensive than neo-realism has done and
pointing, among other things, to a strikingly wide range of possibilities in
the organization of inter-communal relationships.
But it is the awareness of the need to avoid generalizing from a small
number of cases, or just one period of history, that Buzan and Little mainly took from the English School. The substantive content of Buzan and Little s story is quite different from the English School s archetypal rationalist narratives and normative suggestions, or what might broadly be
termed the English School theory .
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Rationalism in the sense in which I have been using the term, which
originates in Wight s study, suggests that the sovereign political communities, into which the human race is subdivided, can coexist and co-operate,
without radical structural alterations at the international level. However,
for these goals to be achieved under the circumstances that prevail in the
contemporary world, certain conditions will have to be met, according to
the diagnoses presented by the English School s leading figures, such as
Bull and Watson in particular.
I have noted Watson s suggestion that in the post-Cold War world, the
concert of great powers, led by the United States, must engage in diplomatic dialogue with lesser powers to take their demands into account.
Bull s formulation in The Anarchical Society is similar. He argued that if
the sovereign states system is to contribute to the goals of economic and
social justice and of the efficient environmental control, in addition to the
more basic goals of peace and security, the element of international society
must be preserved and strengthened. For this purpose, he maintained
(1977: 315), a sense of common interests among the great powers, sufficient to enable them to collaborate in relation to goals of minimum world
order would be essential . He was of course writing at the time of the Cold
War.
But, significantly, he added: a consensus, founded upon the great powers alone, that does not take into account the demands of those Asian, Af-
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rican and Latin American countries cannot be expected to endure (1977:
315). It is striking that he did not include countries of the Middle East in
this list. But he went on to add that the future of international society is
likely to depend on the preservation and extension of a cosmopolitan culture, embracing both common ideas and common values, and rooted in societies in general as well as in their elites (1977: 317).
He explained:
We have ... to recognize that the nascent cosmopolitan culture of today, like international society which it helps to sustain, is weighted in
favour of the dominant cultures of the West. Like the world international society, the cosmopolitan culture on which it depends may need
to absorb non-Western elements to a much greater degree if it is to be
genuinely universal and provide a foundation for a universal international society (1977:317).
In short, Bull was suggesting that, for its effective functioning into the
future, the institutional framework of international society needs to be underpinned by ideas and values shared by peoples across the world. Whether this is a valid and significant suggestion in the first place and how, secondly, such a change may come about, or be brought about, are interesting
questions that the students of world history and international relations
may wish to investigate, whether they are from the English School Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, or somewhere else.
In my view, however, those of us who are inspired by Martin Wight s
pioneering work on international theory are likely to be interested in asking certain meta-historical questions: what world historical narratives are
there?; how do they relate to traditions of international thought?; and
what world political realities do these historical narratives help constitute and reproduce? These, too, should in my view be on the research agenda of the English School.
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