The English School’s Histories and International Relations

Ian Hall’s chapter on the English school explores an important episode in the development of international relations (IR) theory in the English-speaking worlds, one that showcases the importance of history as the disciplinary matrix for the English School of International Relations. In Britain, Hall argues, IR “bore some of the scars of earlier debates” in the field of history, and in particular those resulting from the multi-pronged reaction against the crisis of progressive visions of history (or the “Whig” conception of history, as it would be popularized by Herbert Butterfield). Hall distinguishes three reactions to the post-First World War unraveling of what he calls “developmental historicism”: a more radical historicism, represented by Collingwood and Oakeshott; a modernist response open to the social sciences and eventually ending in some form of social history; and the synthesis between the previous two attempted by Butterfield, which would define the historiographical profile of the English school, and be taken in different directions by Hedley Bull and Martin Wight.

伊恩·霍尔（Ian Hall）关于英国学派的章节探讨了英语世界国际关系（IR）理论发展中的一个重要阶段，这一阶段彰显了历史作为国际关系英国学派的学科母体的重要性。霍尔认为，在英国，国际关系“带有早期历史领域争论的一些痕迹”，尤其是那些因对进步主义历史观（或赫伯特·巴特菲尔德[Herbert Butterfield]所宣扬的“辉格党”历史观）危机的多方面反应而产生的痕迹。霍尔区分了对他所谓的“发展的历史主义”在第一次世界大战后瓦解的三种反应：一种更激进的历史主义，以柯林伍德（Collingwood）和奥克肖特（Oakeshott）为代表；一种对社会科学持开放态度的现代主义回应，最终发展为某种形式的社会史；以及巴特菲尔德所尝试的前两者之间的综合，这将界定英国学派的史学特征，并被赫德利·布尔（Hedley Bull）和马丁·怀特（Martin Wight）引向不同方向。