On the History and Historiography of International Relations
(IR), that is, both the scholarship on the history of the field and the methodological principles involved in that research and writing, is more advanced today than at any time in the past. During the last ten years, a wealth of new literature has appeared that greatly challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding the development of IR. In light of the new and sophisticated research on the historiography of IR, it is even possible to suggest that progress is being made in understanding the complex and multifaceted story of the emergence and maturation of IR as an academic field of study. Scholars have also discovered that researching the history of the field can lead to new insights that have critical purchase in the present. Today, disciplinary history has achieved a level of recognition and legitimacy that it formerly lacked. This is a dramatic improvement on the previously existing attitudes that many expressed about disciplinary history. Despite the growing pluralization of the field and the ever-expanding range of topics being investigated, an element of suspicion was cast on the task of examining its history. One possible explanation for the reluctance to grant legitimacy to this research task is the common notion that we already know the history. Another possibility is that those in the mainstream are satisfied with the dominant story that is told about the development of the field. In any event, there is no shortage of brief synoptic accounts of this history in introductory textbooks, state-of-the-field articles, and International Studies Association presidential addresses. These renditions frequently retell a conventional story of how the field has progressed through a series of phases: idealist, realist, behavioralist, post-behavioralist, pluralist, neorealist, rationalist, post-positivist, and constructivist. The image of the first three phases has been so deeply ingrained in the minds of students and scholars that there almost seems to be no alternative way of understanding the early history of the field. On the History and Historiography of International Relations