International Relations, History

Torbjørn L. Knutsen

The academic field of international relations (IR) is barely a century old. Its roots, however, go much further back. This entry exposes some of these historical roots before it describes the emergence of academic IR—with its university departments, specialized courses, and plethora of journals and books devoted to the causes of war and the preconditions for a lasting peace. The entry pays much attention to the evolution of IR in the aftermath of World War I and the emergence of its distinctive issues and approaches. Then, it follows the growth of IR as a more mature, multiparadigmatic social science in the wake of World War II. The final sections of the entry emphasize the tempestuous discussions that have marked scholarly IR after the end of the Cold War. When did the science of IR emerge? According to the popular foundation myth formulated by Edward Hallett Carr in the late 1930s, ...

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