It is worth noting, as a limitation, that the examples of non-Western contributions to the history of IR given here come mostly from the Asia-Pacific.
This article outlines and critiques the justifications presented in IR textbooks for concentrating on Western histories of IR, highlights the negative repercussions of this approach, and suggests how some of the hurdles to supplying truly global histories in IR textbooks could be overcome. Scarce mention is made of non-Western societies as independent entities, except for when they influenced the two superpowers and their European allies. After 1945, the non-Western world is usually addressed more prominently, but typically through the lenses of the collapse of Western colonization and the Cold War in Europe. Even here, these groups are normally considered within the context of Western colonization, rather than as international actors with foreign policy objectives or value in their own right.Īs late as the Second World War, most IR textbooks hone in on the conflict in Europe, Russia, and North Africa, while giving little consideration to the Pacific Theater, especially to those Asian-Pacific struggles that lacked direct Western involvement, such as the Second Sino-Japanese War. Some make passing reference to the wider world during these periods, but never in comparable depth, and only really begin to acknowledge non-Western societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most textbooks begin with ancient Greece and Rome, advance through the European Middle Ages, and continue with the Peace of Westphalia and the Enlightenment. 79, No.A long tradition exists in International Relations (IR) textbooks of focusing upon Western history when outlining the evolution of the international order. University of Virginia The Russian Review, Vol. His analyses of the economic crisis of European communism, of the role and fate of arms control in Soviet-American relations, of the origins and consequences of Gorbachev’s new thinking, as well as the costs of ideology in Soviet foreign policy are required reading for scholars and students alike.” His analysis of the course of the Cold War in its second half is sharp and he spares little sympathy for late Soviet foreign and national security policy. Dubinin, who wrote seven chapters in volume 2, should be singled out for praise. Carley in his book, The Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II (2000). Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (1939) their dissection of the path to the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 is at least equal to that done by Michael J. Kleimanova and Andrei Sidorov’s recounting of the fate of the Versailles system is obviously influenced by E. Taylor’s Struggle for the Mastery of Europe (1954). Reviakin’s treatment of nineteenth-century European diplomacy calls to mind Jean-Baptiste Duroselle’s classic 1964 work, L’Europe de 1815 à nos jours: vie politique et relations internationales and A.
The level of scholarship and historical judgment that the Russian professors exercise in the two volumes is, as a rule, quite high and defensible. Each chapter includes at the end a list of questions that instructors might pose to students, as well as suggested readings in Russian and West European languages (mainly English) these readings, in their entirety, comprise the bulk of work that should form the core of any initial approach to international studies. In effect, the two volumes constitute an introductory text for MGIMO’s students. Funded by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the work synthesizes the undergraduate pedagogy of the first-rate Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and sheds very interesting light on the study of international relations in contemporary Russia.
“With these volumes, the editors have produced a comprehensive survey of the intersection of international relations and Russian/Soviet foreign policy since 1815.