I chose to critically discuss a required course reading from week 4: Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira and John Hobson (2011) ‘The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919’, Millennium 39(3): 735-758. Carvalho
A recurring theme/point that has been driven home throughout lectures so far revolves around the fact that IR is a divided “discipline” on many fronts in which schools of thought and paradigms compete. Upon the many divisions, we explored the contested and debated questions of why, what and how do we study IR. Furthermore, we saw that queries in relation to the foundation of IR do not stop there; even the question of identifying the birth(s) of IR is argued about!
If I remember correctly, as the great debates and the competing views concerned with the foundation/birth of IR were being discussed, a student asked in class “Why is it so complicated to decide when IR was born?”. This question stuck with me and drew me towards Carvalho’s article titled “The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919”.
SUMMARY
The article claims that the prevalent ‘big bangs’ that we know to have constituted the formation of the discipline of IR— 1648 (Peace of Westphalia) and 1919 (First Debate between idealists and realists)—are nothing but established myths that are demolished by historical and historiographical counterarguments. However, this article notes that these successful counterarguments turn out to remain obscured as the popular foundational myths continue to be perpetuated in textbooks of IR students.
The article organizes its argument by first explaining that Westphalia was viewed as the location in which the overarching and contemporary ideas of the “sovereign state and the anarchic states-system” (Carvalho) began, thus marking a foundational moment of the IR discipline. Futhermore, 1919 was the time in which scholars began to theorize about the international subject matter as an independent area of study thus birthing the discipline of IR. The article then identifies these moments as myths by presenting historical and historiographical contestations that problematize and debunk them while offering alternative moments of “sovereign state formation and the origins of the discipline” (Carvalho). For example, the article emphasizes the way in which the treaty of 1648 limits a previously accepted idea of state sovereignty seen in how rulers had final authority over their territory as early on as 1534 (Preamble to the English Statute of Appeals) and 1555 (Peace of Augsburg). The article further disputes the myths of 1648 and 1919 by claiming that the former twists the way in which the modern sovereign state and states-system were established and the latter (among many other critiques) falsely assumes that IR was miraculously born overnight (Carvalho).
ANSWERING THE QUESTION: “Why is it so complicated to decide when IR was born?”
Seeing as how the text focuses on exploring why the pervading myths of 1648 and 1919 still persist “despite repeated attempts to prosecute the myths in the revisionist court of IR scholarship” (Carvalho), it deduces answers such as extreme researcher specialization, eurocentrism and presentism as being some of the primary perpetuators of these myths that stifle the rise of the alternative historical/historiographical revisions.
With this in mind, the text thus successfully showcases that it is in fact a complicated affair for the discipline of IR to come to a conclusion concerning its founding moments; however, I do not feel as though it satisfies my question of why it is in fact so difficult. While the factors discussed above may be valid reasons that prevent the success of the latter side’s claim over the former and thus result in an overarching conclusion of IR’s point of origin, perhaps there is a simpler reason as to why there is a lack of consensus on the matter.
When the overlooked historical and historiographical reviews concerned with the birth of IR are added into the conversation involving the pre-existing accepted “mythical origins” of IR, the dialogue becomes further muddled with more options that add to the complexity of the answer to this question rather than narrowing it down. However, it seems to be the case that each of these supposed foundational moments explore distinct foundational facets that may or may not overlap (while certain moments such as 1648 are claimed to bring the concept of the modern sovereign state and states-system into fruition, the alternative is 1919 which is a period that is claimed to have begun the scholarly theorizing of international material as an autonomous field). Accordingly, I believe that the reason why it is so complicated to decide when IR was born goes beyond the fact that mythical conceptions are competing with and overlooking historical/historiographical reviews—instead, I believe that the reason why there are so many contradictory claims of when IR was born is because each claim of origin looks at different pieces of the puzzle as opposed to the whole. Going back to simple definitions, if we don’t understand nor agree on what constitutes the birth of a disciple (IR) as a whole, how can it be argued that any of these claims is the true birthing point?
This point carries us right back to the original wicked problem of International Relations in which there is a lack of consensus on what we should study, how we should study and why we should study it. Without a Kuhnian core paradigm—or in this case, core defining characteristics of disciplinary origin in the realm of IR—it is highly unlikely that there will emerge a new paradigm—or in this case, an overarching consensus on the birth point of IR.
-Joanna El-mikati