Inventing International Society

Inventing International Society is a narrative history of the English School of International Relations. After E.H. Carr departed from academic international relations in the late 1940s, Martin Wight became the most theoretically innovative scholar in the discipline. Wight found an institutional setting for his ideas in The British Committee, a group which Herbert Butterfield inaugurated in 1959. The book argues that this date should be regarded as the origin of a distinctive English School of International Relations. In addition to tracing the history of the School, the book argues that later English School scholars, such as Hedley Bull and R.J.Vincent, made a significant contribution to the new normative thinking in International Relations.

TIM DUNNE is an associate editor of the Review of International Studies. He was appointed to a lectureship in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1993. Before then, he was at St Antony's College, Oxford, completing an M.Phil. and a D.Phil in International Relations. In addition to writing a number of articles and chapters on The English School, he has co-edited a book on human rights (with Nicholas J. Wheeler).