Rise of the International

International Relations and History were once academic fields sharing a common concern with the affairs of empires, states, and nations. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, they drifted apart. International Relations largely retained the focus on the affairs and relations of these principal international actors but took a methodological turn leading to higher levels of theoretical abstraction. History, on the other hand, retained the methods that define the discipline but shifted the focus, veering away from matters of state to the vast array of actors, events, activities, and issues that colour everyday life. In recent years, the drift has been arrested by scholars in each discipline who have turned towards the other discipline in their research. International Relations has undergone a ’historiographical turn’ while History has taken an ’international turn’.

Rise of the International brings together scholars of International Relations and History to capture the emergence and development of the thought, the relations, and the systems that have come to be called international in western discourse. The evidence offered by contributors to the volume suggests there has been no single, stable, unchanging concept or object of theoretical reflection or historical investigation that can be called ’the international’, but a variety of historically contingent conceptualizations across different contexts.

Richard Devetak, Professor of the History of International Thought, University of Queensland, Tim Dunne, Provost, University of Surrey

Richard Devetak is Professor of the History of International Thought at The University of Queensland. He has published on the history of political and international thought, contemporary theoretical debates in international relations, humanitarian intervention, the ’war on terror’, and globalisation’s implications for justice and the state, as well as on foreign policy, refugees, and national identity in the Australian context.

Tim Dunne is Provost and Senior Vice-President at the University of Surrey where he is responsible for delivering the University’s academic mission. Previously, Tim held a number of leadership roles at The University of Queensland (UQ), including Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Deputy Provost.