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The realism that did not speak its name: E. H. Carr’s diplomatic histories of the twenty years’ crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2017

Keith Smith*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde
*
*Correspondence to: Keith Smith, University of Strathclyde, Rm 415 McCance Building, Glasgow, G1 1XQ. Author’s email: [email protected]

Abstract

E. H. Carr was one of Europe’s pre-eminent thinkers in the field of international affairs. Yet his contribution to International Relations theory is continually questioned. Realists depict Carr as a quintessential realist; revisionists draw from his wider corpus to qualify his contribution. Although not inaccurate, the revisionist literature is incomplete as it neglects a number of Carr’s diplomatic histories. Refocusing on these, especially the manner in which traces of Ranke’s ‘the primacy of foreign affairs’ tradition is evident, this article points to a more conservative and less critical Carr. Utilising an interpretivist framework, this shift in traditions of thought is explained by the dilemmas Carr faced. Although works of history rather than theory, the article contends that Carr’s diplomatic histories remain relevant, particularly with regard to the embedded criticism of realpolitik they contain. This realisation is made evident through a reading of Carr in parallel with the concept of tragedy.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2017 

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References

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49 Ibid., pp. 208–15.

50 Ibid., p. 184

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53 Ibid., p. 215.

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56 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 15, 88. On the relationship between Carr and Meinecke, see Haslam, No Virtue, p. 185; Bew, Realpolitik, p. 179.

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69 Haslam, No Virtue, pp. 17–18.

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71 Ibid., p. 17. See also Carr, German-Soviet Relations, pp. 89–90.

72 Carr, Twilight, pp. 137–8.

73 Ibid., pp. 151–2.

74 Carr, Spanish Civil War, p. xviii.

75 Ibid., p. 15.

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid., pp. 27, 57–9, 61.

78 Ibid., p. 50.

79 Ibid., p. 84.

80 Carr, Popular Front, p. 51.

81 Ibid., p. 41.

82 Ibid.

83 Carr, Twilight, p. 44.

84 Ibid.

85 Ibid., p. 5.

86 Ibid., p. 93.

87 Ibid., p. 152.

88 Carr, Spanish Civil War, pp. 11–12.

89 Ibid., p. 19.

90 Ibid., pp. 20–1.

91 Ibid., p. 34.

92 Carr, Popular Front, p. 36.

93 Ibid., p. 131.

94 Ibid., p. 128.

95 Ibid., pp. 49–50.

96 Howe, ‘The utopian realism of E. H. Carr’, pp. 282–4; Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations, pp. 144–7; Germain, ‘E. H. Carr and the historical mode of thought’, p. 239

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98 Carr, Twilight, p. 122.

99 Ibid., p. 124.

100 Ibid., p. 52.

101 Carr, The Spanish Civil War, p. 12.

102 Ibid., p. 15

103 Ibid., p. 14.

104 Ibid., p. 85.

105 Ibid., pp. 35–6.

106 In this respect, there is a certain amount of crossover between Carr’s diplomatic histories and the neoclassical realist approach. For this argument with regard to Britain and German-Soviet relations, see Keith Smith, ‘A reassessment of E. H. Carr and the realist tradition: Britain, German-Soviet Relations and neoclassical realism’, International Politics, forthcoming. Although, as will be returned to in the next section, the similarities between Carr’s minor works and the North American realist tradition should not be hastily overdone.

107 Carr, Twilight, p. 70; Carr, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 20–1; Carr, Popular Front, p. 34.

108 Haslam, Vices of Integrity, pp. 178–81.

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116 Ibid., p. 202. They do of course recognise that what constitutes acceptable knowledge is different across time; and that applying the standards of contemporary ‘political science’ to classical works is unjust: ibid. In raising this ‘classical’ point, namely the conditionality of knowledge, the authors neglect its importance for attempting to create a timeless ideal of the realist tradition.

117 Ibid., p. 203.

118 Ibid., p. 195. See also Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Steven E. Lobell, and Norrin M. Ripsman, ‘Introduction’, in Steven E. Lobell et al. (eds), Neoclassical Realism, The State, and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 1–42 (p. 26), fn. 71. For a criticism of this argument, with specific reference to Morgenthau but classical realists more broadly, in terms of discordant epistemology and ontology, see Morgenthau, Hans J., The Concept of the Political, ed. Hartmut Behr, trans. Felix Rösch and Maeva Vidal (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Bevir, Logic, p. 201.

120 I borrow these terms from Hobson, John M. and Lawson, George, ‘What is history in International Relations?’, Millennium: Journal of International Relations, 37:2 (2008), pp. 415435 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Ibid., pp. 421–3.

122 The qualifier is used because even the most atheoretical history contains implicit theoretical assumptions. With regard to Ranke’s historiography, Krieger argues that Ranke’s ideas (the independence of politics and history, the search for cause and the concern with vital insight) meant that implicitly he was committed ‘to a theory of history which exalted historically rooted facts over any theory to be drawn from history’. Krieger, Leonard, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), p. 23 Google Scholar.

123 Ibid., pp. 425–7.

124 Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 194.

125 Ibid., p. 195.

126 Carr, Twilight, p. viii, emphasis added.

127 See, for instance, his employment of Jacques Duclos’s and Palmiro Togliatti’s memoirs, The Spanish Civil War, pp. 2–3, 52–3. Carr had earlier pointed to the inherent subjectivity of memoirs as primary and authentic documents, What is History, pp. 15–17.

128 Bevir, Logic, p. 201.

129 I am referring specifically to the historically conditioned nature of knowledge and the emancipatory and progressive aspects of critical theory. See Rengger, Nicholas and Thirkell-White, Ben, ‘Still critical after all these years? The past, present and future of critical theory in International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 33:S1 (2007), pp. 324 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pp. 5–7).

130 Behr and Heath, ‘Misreading in IR theory’, p. 336.

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132 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, p. 27.

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134 Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 208–39; Carr, Nationalism and After, pp. 38–74; Carr, The Conditions of Peace, p. 130.

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138 Ibid., p. 6.

139 Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics, p. 20.

140 Ibid., p. 16.

141 Ibid., p. 257.

142 Carr, ‘Autobiography’, p. xix.

143 Carr, Popular Front, pp. 174–5.

144 Ibid., p. 178.

145 Ibid., p. 179.

146 Ibid.

147 Ibid., pp. 184–5

148 Ibid., p. 187.

149 Ibid., p. 188.

150 Ibid.

151 One might conclude that Carr was bowdlerising his own historical past here. Immediately following the Second World War, however, Carr did express doubts over the Munich agreement. On the sincerity assumption on Bevirian interpretivism, see Bevir, Logic, p. 236. Distortion caused by a pro-Soviet attitude may also be evident, see Bevir, Logic, pp. 267–70.

152 Cited in Cozette, ‘The critical dimension of realism’, p. 16.

153 Carr, The Spanish Civil War, p. xvi.