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Diplomatic Investigations: Essays On
The Theory Of International Politics

Herbert Butterfield
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Diplomatic Investigations
Original Description of the Book

by Butterfield and Wight
This volume of essays breaks new ground in the study of international

relations, and at the same time revives the older tradition of thought. Its
fundamental concern is to throw light on the principles of prudence and
moral obligation which have held together the international society of states
throughout its history, and still hold it together. Thus it is concerned with
the nature of the international states-system, the assumptions and ideas of
diplomacy, the principles of foreign policy, and the ethics of international
politics and war. It differs from many contemporary writings on inter-
national theory in three ways. First, it does not attempt to impose an all-
embracing theoretical framework on international relations; its mode is,
rather, empirical and inductive. Secondly, it is firmly grounded in inter-
national history, believing that the touchstone of all theory must be the
record of historical experience, and what has actually been found to work. In
this connexion the relevance and topicality of certain classical writings on
international law and on war is shown. Thirdly, the essays have a pervading
moral concern. They do not forget that foreign affairs and international
politics are in the end neither a game nor a system, but the political region
preeminently of the contingent and the unforeseen, in which the life of
nations may be at stake, and agonizing decisions have to be made.
The unifying conception of the book is ‘international society’. The essays
explore whether, and in what sense, there is an international community,
and what its nature is. What are the duties and consequences of membership
in this society? What are its tested and established principles of political
intercourse? The longest essay examines whether there is a distinct Western
tradition in international relations. The last three essays discuss aspects of
conflict and change within international society, and look to what might be
the problems of a future disarmed world.
The book is the result of regular discussions in recent years, in Cambridge,
by a group of international theorists, historians, and persons in official posi-
tions. They include an ambassador, an editor of a national newspaper, a senior
Treasury official, and a philosopher. Their discussions have been parallel to but
distinct from those of a sister committee in the United States.
Diplomatic
Investigations
Essays in the Theory of
International Politics
Edited by
HERBERT BUTTERFIELD
and
MARTIN WIGHT
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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© T&F except Introduction © Tim Dunne & Ian Hall 2019
Published by arrangement with Routledge, an imprint of the
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The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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Preface
The papers composing this volume have been chosen from a number,
written in recent years, by a group of scholars and others with an official
or professional interest in the theoretical aspects of international politics.
The circle for which the papers were written had its origin in the enterprise
and liberality of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1954 two representatives of
the Foundation, Mr Dean Rusk and Dr Kenneth W. Thompson, convened a
committee of Americans who were interested in theoretical questions about
international relations. They included publicists, university professors, and
former members of the policy planning staff of the State Department. They
met principally at Columbia University, and their discussions led to publi-
cation.¹ The success of the American group prompted Dr Thompson to
suggest that there should be a similar committee in England. In 1958 the
editors of the present volume acted upon the proposal, and invited colleagues
who shared their interest in the theory of international politics to a prelim-
inary talk. It was the beginning of regular weekend meetings, three times a
year, in Peterhouse, Cambridge, under the chairmanship of the Master.
Besides the contributors to this volume, Sir William Armstrong, Donald
McLachlan, Adam Watson, and Desmond Williams have been members.
On one occasion, Kenneth Thompson was able to come to a meeting; on
another occasion Sir Pierson Dixon was a guest.
The Rockefeller Foundation gave the group the name of the British
Committee on the Theory of International Politics. ‘The theory of inter-
national politics’ is a phrase without wide currency or clear meaning in this
country. The group took it to cover enquiry into the nature of the inter-
national states-system, the assumptions and ideas of diplomacy, the prin-
ciples of foreign policy, the ethics of international relations and war. This is a
region that still calls for new approaches and for academic treatment.² It
marches with the domains of the political theorist, the international lawyer,
¹ Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, ed. W. T. R. Fox (University of Notre Dame

Press, 1959).
² ‘What I do regret is that we have failed to establish, alongside international law, a parallel
and articulate science of international ethics,’ D. H. N. Johnson, The English Tradition in
International Law, an inaugural lecture (Bell, for the London School of Economics, 1962),
pp. 26–7.
vi 
the diplomatic historian, the student of international relations, and the

strategic analyst. With each of these it blends, but it is something different
from all of them. The Committee have not had the intention of undertaking
the kind of discussions promoted by Chatham House or the Institute for
Strategic Studies, and believe that no other body in England has made the
theoretical aspects of international politics its central concern.
It soon became clear to the members of the British Committee that within
this ill-defined field they had different interests from their American col-
leagues. The connoisseur of national styles may notice the contrasts. The
British have probably been more concerned with the historical than the
contemporary, with the normative than the scientific, with the philosophical
than the methodological, with principles than policy. But the discussions of
the American committee were themselves in some respects traditional com-
pared with the flourishing contemporary school of American and Australian
international theory and systems analysis. Here the British Committee have
been conscious of the antithesis to their own approach. Some of their papers
examining the differences between them may form the basis of a second
volume which is in contemplation. Meanwhile, attention may be drawn to
some of the characteristics of the present collection. These were not designed
beforehand, but emerged by common consent as the discussions proceeded.
First, the frame of reference has been, not the limits and uses of inter-
national theory, nor the formulation of foreign policy, but the diplomatic
community itself, international society, the states-system. The Committee
found themselves investigating the nature and distinguishing marks of the
diplomatic community, the way it functions, the obligations of its members,
its tested and established principles of political intercourse. The longest
essay in the book examines whether there is a distinct Western tradition
in international relations. The last three essays discuss aspects of conflict and
change within international society, and look to what might be the problems
of a future disarmed world.
Secondly, the Committee have not been concerned with an all-embracing
theoretical framework, a general theory, for international politics. Their
procedure has been, rather, empirical and inductive. Their point of view
has on the whole been historical. They have tended to suppose that the
continuities in international relations are more important than the inac-
tions; that statecraft is an historical deposit of practical wisdom growing very
slowly, that the political, diplomatic, legal, and military writers who might
loosely be termed ‘classical’ have not been superseded as a result of recent
development in sociology and psychology, and that it is a useful enterprise to
 vii
explore the corpus of diplomatic and military experience in order to refor-

mulate its lessons in relation to contemporary needs.
Thirdly, it might be claimed that these papers have a pervading moral
concern. In their discussions the Committee have not been able to forget that
foreign affairs and international relations, however they may be studied or
analysed, are in themselves not a closed theoretical system. They are the
political region pre-eminently of the contingent and the unforeseen, in which
the survival of nations may be at stake, and agonizing decisions have to be
made. The underlying aim of the present collection is to clarify the principles
of prudence and moral obligation which have held together the international
society of states throughout its history, and still hold it together.
To begin with the Committee’s discussions were discursive rather than
systematic. The first paper printed here was also the first paper offered to the
group; its title was intended to be provocative. At the same first full meeting, in
January 1959, Donald MacKinnon read a paper entitled ‘What Is the Attrac-
tion of Communism Today?’ Thus launched, the discussions took their own
course, following the wind of the argument. A record of the discussions was
made and circulated afterwards. Subsequent papers arose out of the discus-
sions. Sometimes two independent papers on the same topic were offered for
discussion at the same meeting; sometimes one treatment of a theme evoked an
alternative treatment later—thus the two essays on ‘The Balance of Power’.
After some time it was seen that the papers, though not systematically
planned, had a community of assumptions and treatment that might make
them of interest to a wider circle of readers, and one of the editors made a
selection for publication. Each contributor has had the opportunity to revise
his paper to whatever extent the discussions upon it and further reflection
have seemed to him to require. The editors have tried to respect the varied
length and nature of the papers, but to give them some uniformity by
bringing them up to date and supplying references so far as possible. Only
one essay, that on ‘Threats of Force in International Relations’, has been left
entirely as it was written in April 1961.
The paper entitled ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ has already
been published in International Relations, vol. ii, no. I, April 1960. We thank
the editor of that journal for permission to reprint it, with some changes and
additions. It remains for the editors, on behalf of all the members of the
Committee, to express their gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation for the
grant that make possible their meetings and discussions.
H. Butterfield
M. Wight
Contents
List of Contributors xi
Introduction to the New Edition 1
Ian Hall and Tim Dunne
1. Why Is There No International Theory? 37
Martin Wight
2. Society and Anarchy in International Relations 55
Hedley Bull
3. The Grotian Conception of International Society 71
Hedley Bull
4. Natural Law 95
D. M. MacKinnon
5. Western Values in International Relations 111
Martin Wight
6. The Balance of Power 154
Herbert Butterfield
7. The Balance of Power 171
Martin Wight
8. Collective Security and Military Alliances 198
G. F. Hudson
9. The New Diplomacy and Historical Diplomacy 203
Herbert Butterfield
10. War as an Instrument of Policy 215
Michael Howard
x 
11. Threats of Force in International Relations 223

G. F. Hudson
12. Problems of a Disarmed World 228
Michael Howard
Index 237
List of Contributors
Hedley Bull Reader in International Relations in the University of London
Herbert Butterfield Master of Peterhouse and Regius Professor of Modern History in

the University of Cambridge
Michael Howard Professor of War Studies in the University of London
G. F. Hudson Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford
D. M. MacKinnon Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge
Martin Wight Dean of the School of European Studies and a Professor of History in
the University of Sussex
Additional Contributors to the New Edition
Tim Dunne Professor of International Relations and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at The

University of Queensland
Ian Hall Professor of International Relations at Griffith University

Introduction to the New Edition

Ian Hall and Tim Dunne
Only a few books in the field of International Relations (IR) can be called
iconic. Diplomatic Investigations is one of them. Edited by Herbert Butterfield
and Martin Wight, it brings together twelve papers delivered to early meet-
ings of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics,
including several classic essays: Wight’s ‘Why Is There No International
Theory?’ and ‘Western Values in International Relations’, Hedley Bull’s
‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’ and ‘The Grotian Concep-
tion of International Society’, and the two contributions made by Butterfield
and by Wight on ‘The Balance of Power’. Individually and collectively, these
chapters have influenced not the English school of international relations,¹
but also a range of other scholars across the field of IR.²
Diplomatic Investigations was first published at a critical juncture, in the
mid-1960s. At that time, arguments were raging on both sides of the
Atlantic—and across it—about how international relations should be
approached by scholars. The traditional view, established during the inter-
war years and held by both realists and liberals, was that international
relations constituted a realm of social interaction distinct from others—
and especially from domestic politics. As such, it had its own practices, rules,
and norms, ought to have its own body of theory, and deserved to be the
¹ On the evolution and the arguments of the English School, see especially Tim Dunne, Inventing
International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), Brunello
Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (1954–1985): The Rediscovery
of History (Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 2005), Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English
School of International Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007) and Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations:
The Societal Approach (Cambridge: Polity, 2014).
² Take, for example, Wight’s ‘Why is there no International Theory?’, which has provoked a
series of similar articles exploring other areas of past and present international thought,
including Justin Rosenberg, ‘Why is there no International Historical Sociology?’ European
Journal of International Relations 12(3) (2006), pp. 307–340; Yaqing Qin, ‘Why is there no
Chinese International Relations Theory?’ International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 7(3) (2007),
pp. 313–40; and Cynthia Weber, ‘Why Is There No Queer International Theory?’ European
Journal of International Relations 21(1) (2015), pp. 27–51.
2  
focus of its own academic discipline, or at least a recognized sub-discipline

within political science. The traditionalists disagreed among themselves, of
course, about whether they ought to focus on anarchy, states, and power, as
the realists believed, or on organizations and institutions, as liberals thought,
but they agreed that IR did or should exist as an autonomous entity with the
academy.³
During the 1950s and 1960s, these arguments were subjected to intense
criticism by behaviouralists, who argued that international relations did not
have practices, rules, or norms different from any other realm of social life,
and that the social sciences ought to be unified with a common method
and—ideally—a general theory of social behaviour.⁴ In response, during
what became known as the ‘Second Great Debate’, classical realists and
liberals, including pioneering scholars like the Frenchman Raymond Aron
and the German-American Hans J. Morgenthau, fought a long rearguard
action to defend the autonomy of IR and their so-called traditionalist
approach from the behavouralists, as the latter tried to unify the social
sciences, methodologically and theoretically.⁵
Diplomatic Investigations spoke directly to these debates, weighing in
on the side of traditionalists, while keeping a distance from some aspects
of American traditionalism, especially its pragmatic concern with policy
relevance.⁶ The editors knew both the traditionalist and the behavouralist
³ For contemporary views of this debate in the United States, see especially Klaus Knorr and
James N. Rosenau (eds), Contending Approaches to International Politics (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1969). On background to these debates, see Brian C. Schmidt,
The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Albany,
NY: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 189–225.
⁴ In IR, advocates of this new approach included, in the United States, Morton Kaplan,
author of Systems and Process in International Politics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1957),
and in the United Kingdom, the Australian John W. Burton, whose works included Inter-
national Relations: A General Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). See also
Frederick Dunn, ‘The Present Course of International Relations Research’, World Politics 2(1)
(1949), pp. 80–95.
⁵ See especially Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, trans.
Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), and for
Hans J. Morgenthau’s view of behaviouralism, see ‘Common Sense and Theories of Inter-
national Relations’, Journal of International Affairs 21(2) (1967), pp. 207–14. On the tensions
between political realists and behaviouralists, see also Nicolas Guilhot (ed.), The Invention of
International Relations Theory: Realism, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the 1954 Conference on
Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
⁶ On policy relevance and the rise of political realism, see inter alia Joel H. Rosenthal,
Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear
Age (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1991) and on the influence of
behaviouralism, see David Easton, ‘Political Science in the United States: Past and Present’,
International Political Science Review 6(1) (1985), pp. 137–41.
     3
arguments well, as both Butterfield and Wight had been involved since the
late 1940s in both British and transatlantic conversations about IR, its
status as a academic discipline, its methods, and the pressures generated
on the field by governments.⁷ They had each visited the United States on a
several occasions: Butterfield delivered a paper to the great and the good of
American IR at Columbia in 1956; Wight spent the 1956–7 academic year
teaching in Morgenthau’s place at the University of Chicago while the
latter took leave.⁸ Now, in the mid-1960s, they used Diplomatic Investiga-
tions as a means of laying out their preferred understanding of what IR
should look like and how it ought to be approached at a time at which not
only was the field under behaviouralist pressure, but also as interest in IR
was growing in British universities among both students and researchers.⁹
The book was thus conceived as a defence of what Chris Brown aptly
terms the ‘premise that IR is a distinctive, sui generis, discourse’ and of a
traditionalist mode of its analysis.¹⁰ Butterfield and Wight acknowledged
that the theory of international politics was a ‘region that still calls for new
approaches’, but argued that ‘traditionalism’ or the ‘classical approach’ was
still the best way to study the field.¹¹ They contrasted their stance with that
laid out by the parallel American Committee in an earlier volume, Theoret-
ical Aspects of International Relations (1959), expressing concern about what
⁷ On Butterfield and Wight’s early views about IR, see Ian Hall, ‘History, Christianity and
Diplomacy: Sir Herbert Butterfield and International Relations’, Review of International Studies
28(4) (2002), pp. 727–9 and Ian Hall, The International Thought of Martin Wight (New York:
Palgrave, 2006), pp. 88–97.
⁸ The respondent for Butterfield’s paper on ‘Morality and Political Process in International
Affairs’ was Kenneth N. Waltz (Michael Bentley, The Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield:
History, Science and God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 331. At Chicago,
Wight gave the first version of the ‘International Theory’ lectures subsequently lauded at the
London School of Economics and later reconstituted and published as International Theory:
The Three Traditions, ed. Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight (London: Leicester University Press,
1990).
⁹ On the development of what we might call the pre-discipline of IR in Britain during this
period, see Ian Hall, Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945–1975
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2012).
¹⁰ In correspondence with the authors (16 February 2016), Chris Brown observed that
Diplomatic Investigations ‘represented the best that scholarship has to offer given the premise
that IR is a distinctive, sui generis, discourse—and thus forms a jumping off point for those who
wish to contest this premise’.
¹¹ Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, ‘Preface’, this volume p. v. The terms ‘traditional-
ism’ and ‘classical approach’ were also prominent in the simultaneous debate between Hedley
Bull and Morton Kaplan. See Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical
Approach’, World Politics 18(3) (1966), pp. 361–77, and Morton Kaplan’s response, ‘The New
Great Debate: Traditionalism versus Science in International Relations’, World Politics 19(1)
(1967), pp. 1–20.
4  
they saw as the pragmatic tendencies of significant elements of American

IR.¹² Butterfield and Wight declared that they were ‘more concerned with
the historical than the contemporary, with the normative than the scientific,
with the philosophical than the methodological, with principles than policy’.
The focus of their research was on what they called the ‘diplomatic com-
munity’ of practitioners, its ‘functions’, ‘obligations’, and ‘tested and estab-
lished principles of political intercourse’.¹³ Their ‘procedure’ was ‘empirical
and inductive’ and their ‘point of view’ was ‘historical’. And throughout the
essays, there was a ‘pervading moral concern’.¹⁴
These views set Diplomatic Investigations apart from much American
scholarship of the period and helped to ground the English School as it
evolved in the years that followed. They also distinguished the work of the
book’s contributors from a significant proportion of British academics of the
time. From the 1920s onwards, a number of scholars in the United Kingdom
had been experimenting with a broad range of new social scientific methods
and techniques, and this trend continued in the post-war period. In IR, the
most prominent were individuals such as C. A. W. Manning, the Montague
Burton Professor of International Relations at the London School of Eco-
nomics (LSE), and Georg Schwarzenberger, professor at University College,
London, both of whom pioneered distinctive sociological approaches to
IR.¹⁵ Alongside them were a number of others working with alternative
methods and theories, including scholars working on quantitative studies of
inter-state conflict, like Lewis Fry Richardson, and behaviouralist accounts
of the international system, like John W. Burton.¹⁶
Diplomatic Investigations was a manifesto aimed not simply at American
IR, but also at those parts of British IR that were experimenting with new
approaches. It aimed to highlight the virtues of ‘traditionalism’ in contrast to
¹² Butterfield and Wight, 'Preface', p. 4. William T. R. Fox (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of

International Relations (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959). The book
included essays by Paul H. Nitze, Hans J. Morgenthau, W. T. R. Fox, Kenneth N. Waltz, Charles
P. Kindleberger, Arnold Wolfers, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
¹³ ibid., p. vi. ¹⁴ ibid., pp. vi–vii.
¹⁵ The literature on Manning is fairly large, but see Hidemi Suganami, ‘C. A. W. Manning
and the Study of International Relations’, Review of International Studies 27(1) (2001),
pp. 91–107. The literature on Schwarzenberger is comparatively thin. For a discussion of his
work, see Hall, Dilemmas of Decline, pp. 41–3, 46–7.
¹⁶ On Richardson, see Oliver M. Ashford, Prophet—or Professor? The Life and Work of Lewis
Fry Richardson (Bristol: Hilger, 1985), and on Burton, see Martin Griffiths, ‘John Burton versus
International Relations: The Costs of Criticism’, Australian Journal of International Affairs
67(1) (2013), pp. 55–70.
     5
these more novel ways of studying the field. This should come as no surprise:
none of the contributors were political scientists—even as practiced in
Britain—or sociologists or economists. Rather, most of them were historians
sceptical on the whole about the social sciences and about the social scien-
tific approaches to the study of politics and international relations that
emerged, and grew in strength, in the first half of the twentieth century.¹⁷
To locate Diplomatic Investigations in this way is not, however, to suggest
that it is an antiquarian curio, still less some kind of reactionary screed. The
book is iconic because it asked difficult questions of IR at a crucial moment,
as the field was slowly coalescing in Britain and changing rapidly on the
other side of the Atlantic. It remains relevant because it was and remains an
inspiration to scholars also convinced that understanding ‘international
society’ requires an interpretive approach that delves into the meaning of
social actions for the various agents involved in international politics, today
and in the past.
The Making of the Book
Diplomatic Investigations is a compilation of essays written for the British

Committee on the Theory of International Politics, a group brought together
by Herbert Butterfield with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation.¹⁸
Butterfield began to construct the Committee in 1958 and he led it until
his retirement in 1968. The first two members he invited to join were his
former student, Desmond Williams, then professor of history at University
College, Dublin, and Martin Wight, then reader in the Department of
International Relations at the LSE. After some debate, these three agreed
to involve the philosopher and theologian Donald MacKinnon, whom
Wight had known since his undergraduate days, and the military historian
and strategist, Michael Howard. Butterfield then added the diplomat Adam
Watson, another of his former students, and—for a time—the civil servant
William Armstrong.¹⁹
¹⁷ Ian Hall, ‘The English School’s Histories and International Relations’, in Brian Schmidt
and Nicolas Guilhot (eds) Historiographical Investigations in International Relations (New
York: Palgrave, 2019).
¹⁸ For an exhaustive study of the workings of the Committee, see Vigezzi, British Committee
on the Theory of International Politics.
¹⁹ Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 91.
6  
Notoriously, others whom Butterfield might have invited, given their

expertise in the area, were not. Cambridge colleagues of Butterfield with
past or present interests in IR, like the historians E. H. Carr and
F. H. Hinsley, were excluded.²⁰ So was Charles (C. A. W.) Manning—
Wight’s head of department and the LSE’s Montague Burton Professor—
and Geoffrey Goodwin, Manning’s successor in both roles.²¹ Only one
person from St Antony’s College, Oxford, the main centre for international
history and area studies at the University, was asked to join the group: the
Sinologist Geoffrey Hudson. Oxford’s Montague Burton Professor of Inter-
national Relations, the diplomatic historian Agnes Headley-Morley, was
never mentioned in the Committee’s surviving correspondence. Nor, for
that matter, was Georg Schwarzenberger, who led the charge in the post-war
years for sociological approaches to IR from University College, London.²² It
is also significant that no international lawyer, economist, or sociologist was
involved, at least at the outset, and that no political scientist or political
theorist was included. It is significant too that the academic backgrounds of
those who were invited were predominantly in history. Butterfield and
Wight, in particular, had long been convinced that IR should be informed
by history and historians, rather than by others.²³
This is not to say that Butterfield and the other members of the original
Committee wanted the group to confine IR to history or historical studies.
The chairman was clear on this point, insisting in an early discussion of the
‘objects of the Committee’ that they must eschew ‘diplomatic history’, as
well as avoiding ‘mere journalistic discussion of contemporary affairs’.²⁴ The
aim of the Committee was different: to try to elucidate the ‘fundamental
principles’ of international relations, both practical and ethical, using the
techniques and mindset of the historian. In other words, they were to
explore the normative structure of what Wight termed, in that early
²⁰ Butterfield feuded with Carr over a number of years and indeed over many issues, both
personal and professional. In correspondence, Butterfield described Hinsley as ‘a bit heavy-
handed’ and ‘the ordinary kind of diplomatic historian who refuses to question current
assumptions’ (Butterfield to Williams, 28 April 1958, Butterfield MS 531/W270). The early
debates over membership are chronicled in Vigezzi, British Committee on the Theory of
International Politics, pp. 111–16 and pp. 145–8.
²¹ Dunne, Inventing International Society, pp. 92–4.
²² See Georg Schwarzenberger’s Power Politics: A Study of International Society, 2nd ed.
(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1951), as well as Hall, Dilemmas of Decline, pp. 41–4.
²³ See Bentley, Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield, pp. 320–44; Hall, International
Thought of Martin Wight, especially pp. 87–110.
²⁴ ‘Discussion on the Objects of the Committee’, 20 September 1959, British Committee
Papers 5, Chatham House, London, p. 1.
     7
discussion, ‘international society’.²⁵ This implied analyses of the traditions of

international thought, past and present diplomatic practice and the prin-
ciples underlying it, and the ethics of international politics.
To carry out these tasks, the British Committee first met at Peterhouse,
Butterfield’s college at Cambridge, in January 1959, and three times a year
thereafter. At each meeting between two and six papers were circulated in
advance and presented by their authors, each addressing an agreed theme.²⁶
On occasion, guests were also invited to deliver papers or simply to partici-
pate in the conversation. Butterfield took copious notes of what was said at
the early meetings.²⁷ After the first few, during which there were lengthy
discussions about their subject-matter and the purpose of the Committee,
the members decided they needed a specialist in IR after all, and added
Hedley Bull, an Australian who had studied philosophy at Sydney and
Oxford, before joining Wight to teach at the LSE.
By 1961 the British Committee had produced enough papers to consider
getting them published, and the job of editing them and securing a contract
for a book was given to Butterfield, as chair. Unfortunately, he acquitted
neither expeditiously. Butterfield, then sixty-one years old, was heavily
involved in both university administration and academic intrigue, at both
of which he excelled.²⁸ In addition to his professorial duties, in 1955 he had
become master of Peterhouse, a post he held until his retirement in 1968. In
1959, the same year in which he convened the first meeting of the British
Committee, Butterfield also began a two-year stint as vice-chancellor of the
University of Cambridge. In 1963, when Diplomatic Investigations should
have appeared in print, he was appointed Regius Professor of History, a post
that carried additional responsibilities in the History Faculty.
Butterfield’s tardiness in getting the essays edited and submitted to a
publisher annoyed the authors and put at risk a new tranche of funding
from Rockefeller for a further set of British Committee meetings.²⁹ To
Wight, in late January 1964, Bull was characteristically vociferous and
blunt, complaining that Butterfield had ‘behaved disgracefully over this
volume’. Bull urged Wight that the two of them confront him with an
²⁵ ibid., p. 2.
²⁶ A vivid picture of Committee proceedings can be found in Michael Howard, Captain
Professor: A Life in War and Peace (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 159–60.
²⁷ The papers are listed in Vigezzi, British Committee, pp. 327–48, and some of Butterfield’s
notes from the early meetings are reprinted pp. 357–97.
²⁸ See especially Bentley, Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield, pp. 345–53.
²⁹ On Butterfield’s concerns about funding, see Dunne, Inventing International Society,
p. 104.
8  
‘ultimatum’ to ‘get on with it, or to have someone else do so, or abandon the
project and release the papers for publication elsewhere’.³⁰
In the event, Butterfield allowed Wight to become his co-editor, and the
manuscript was sent to Cambridge University Press for consideration. The
process did not go well. In August 1965 the commissioning editor,
R. W. David, wrote to Butterfield with bad news. The anonymous reviewers
did not like the manuscript, with one submitting a root-and-branch attack.
Butterfield suspected his Cambridge colleague F. H. Hinsley was responsible,
attributing his colleague’s hostility to his being in ‘a curious state’, ‘impa-
tient’ for a promotion, ‘very conscious’ that he had not been invited to
become a member of the British Committee, and dogmatic about his
preferred theory of international politics.³¹ However, it is more plausible,
that the reviewer was either Australian John Burton, then at University
College, London, or Michael Banks, who had just joined the LSE.³² Neither
were sympathetic to the ‘traditionalism’ of Diplomatic Investigations,
favouring as they did behavouralist and Marxist approaches.
The reviewer’s report implied the essays were stale, arguing that if they
had ‘been printed when they were written, one could have been more
enthusiastic about them’. This suggestion was somewhat unfair, as the
editors and authors had taken pains to ensure that the essays were not
dated by discussion of contemporary history. The report also criticized the
book’s lack of engagement with the contemporary literature on their sub-
jects, especially that being produced by American scholars. This was a more
reasonable criticism, but one that arguably missed the point of the book,
which was to demonstrate the value of traditionalism, not to critique
alternatives.³³ In any event, a contract was not offered by Cambridge.
Instead, Butterfield and Wight approached Allen & Unwin, who were
more enthusiastic about the project.
The version of Diplomatic Investigations Butterfield had originally sub-
mitted to Cambridge University Press had included seventeen or eighteen
essays—five or six more than were published in the final book. Two essays
³⁰ Hedley Bull to Martin Wight, 31 January 1964, Wight MS 233 1/9, British Library of
Political and Economic Sciences, London.
³¹ Herbert Butterfield to Martin Wight, 13 August 1965, Wight MS 248.
³² Roger Epp, ‘The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics and Central
Figures in the English School’, in Robert Denemark (eds), The International Studies Encyclope-
dia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), online at: http://www.isacompendium.com/sub
scriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781444336597_yr2014_chunk_g97814443365974_ss1-1.
³³ R. W. David to Herbert Butterfield, 11 August 1965, Wight MS 248. For the wider story,
see Dunne, Inventing International Society, pp. 104–5.
     9
on science and international relations were dropped prior to the submission

of the manuscript to Allen & Unwin, leaving fifteen or sixteen.³⁴ As a
condition of contract, the publisher requested that the manuscript be short-
ened further, and Wight took the decision to excise another four chapters.³⁵
These were Michael Howard’s paper on the concept of ‘Vital Interests’,
Donald MacKinnon’s idiosyncratically titled ‘What Is the Real “Persona”
of the Community and What Is the Minimum Required to Maintain It?’,
Adam Watson’s ‘Interests of State Other Than Vital Interests’, and Des-
mond Williams’ ‘The Primacy of Foreign Policy’. With these cuts made,
Wight then drafted the preface, which was then revised by Butterfield, and
the manuscript was submitted to the publisher in October 1965.
The Contributors
Between 1959 and 1984 the British Committee was dominated by historians,
with some involvement from philosophers (like MacKinnon) and practi-
tioners (like Watson). This reflected its chairman’s suspicion of political
scientists and political theorists, specialists in IR, and indeed contemporary
historians working on international relations. The authors—and the British
Committee—were also dominated by Oxbridge: at the time Diplomatic
Investigations was published, two of the contributors held posts at Cam-
bridge; the remaining four had studied or taught at Oxford at some point in
their careers. All of them were male; indeed, only three women—Coral Bell,
Agnes Hurewitz, and Zara Steiner—ever gave papers at British Committee
meetings, and of those only Bell became a full member of the Committee.³⁶
The oldest contributor to Diplomatic Investigations, Herbert Butterfield
(1900–79), had read history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, just after the First
World War. He become a fellow of that college soon after completing his
degree, and then professor of modern history in 1944. An adept academic
politician, he also served as Master of Peterhouse between 1955 and his
retirement in 1968 and as vice-chancellor between 1959 and 1961. In 1963,
³⁴ The two essays were Michael Howard’s ‘Scientific Development and International Rela-
tions’ and Wight’s ‘Has Scientific Advance Changed the Nature of International Politics in
Kind, not merely in Degree?’, both presented at the fourth meeting of the Committee, in January
1960. See David to Butterfield, 11 August 1965, Wight MS 248, and Vigezzi, British Committee,
p. 174, note 3.
³⁵ Vigezzi, British Committee, p. 175, note 5.
³⁶ On Bell and her contribution to IR, see especially Desmond Ball and Sheryn Lee (eds),
Power and International Relations: Essays in Honour of Coral Bell (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014).
10  
he was elevated to the Regius Chair in History. He retired from both his
Mastership and his Chair in 1968, sadly lapsing into ill-health for the final
decade of his life, unable to complete a series of major projects.³⁷
Butterfield is best known for his third book, published early in his career:
his elegant and elusive essay on The Whig Interpretation of History (1931),
an attack on both progressivism and moralism in historiography. Although
he wrote much else, he never published the great work of anti-progressive,
anti-moralist narrative history he arguably should have written, nor the
biographies of the politician Charles James Fox and the historian Harold
Temperley he repeatedly promised. Instead, he focused most of his efforts
on a series of short, beautifully written ‘little general books’, as he once called
them,³⁸ many put together from lectures or talks given at Cambridge and
elsewhere. They included The Historical Novel (1924), Napoleon (1939), The
Statecraft of Machiavelli (1940), The Englishman and his History (1944), The
Origins of Modern Science (1949), Liberty in the Modern World (1951),
Man on his Past (1955) and George III and the Historians (1957), as well
as the posthumously published The Origins of History (1981). Glimpses of
what Butterfield could have done with more conventional historical works
can be found in the forensic The Peace Tactics of Napoleon, 1806–1808
(1929) and the more controversial George III, Lord North, and People,
1779–1780 (1949).
Butterfield’s most significant contributions to the study of international
relations were a series of books based largely on series of lectures, including
Christianity and History (1949), History and Human Relations (1951), and
Christianity, Diplomacy, and War (1953), and International Conflict in the
Twentieth Century (1960), as well as his essays in Diplomatic Investigations
and The Aberystwyth Papers (1972), and his Martin Wight memorial lecture
on raison d’état.³⁹ In these works, Butterfield tried to sketch out a normative
³⁷ There are a number of biographies of Butterfield. They include: Alberto R. Coll, The
Wisdom of Statecraft: Sir Herbert Butterfield and the Philosophy of International Politics
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), Keith Sewell, Herbert Butterfield and the Inter-
pretation of History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), C. T. McIntire, Herbert Butterfield: Historian
as Dissenter (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), Kenneth McIntyre, Herbert Butter-
field: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), and Bentley,
Life and Thought of Herbert Butterfield.
³⁸ Herbert Butterfield to Donald MacKinnon, 17 August 1959, Butterfield MS 531(ii)/M18a,
Cambridge University Library.
³⁹ See Butterfield, Christianity and History (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1949); History and
Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951); Christianity, Diplomacy and War (London: The
Epworth Press, 1953); International Conflict in the Twentieth Century: A Christian View
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960); ‘The Balance of Power’ and ‘The New Diplomacy
     11
theory of international relations that might guide diplomatic practice in the

Cold War, a theory that was true to his Christian faith and true to his
philosophy of history, that avoided moralism, and that built on the enduring
wisdom (as he saw it) of eighteenth-century Whiggism.⁴⁰ Butterfield feared
and deplored the intrusion of moral and ideological intransigence into
international relations, and blamed Wilsonian idealism and its post-war
anti-Communist successors, as well as Communist internationalism, for
the frequency and brutality of modern conflict and the destabilization of
the fragile modus vivendi that underpinned international society. Only a
kind of enlightened and sophisticated Machivellianism, Butterfield believed,
could restore and sustain international order and provide the basis for a
measure of international justice.⁴¹
G. F. (Geoffrey Francis) Hudson (1903–74) had a more varied career than
Butterfield. An academic, bureaucrat, and journalist, he played a key role in
advancing the study of East Asia at the University of Oxford.⁴² Elected a
fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1926, he served with the Foreign
Office Research Department during the Second World War, and in 1954
moved to St Antony’s College to direct its Far Eastern Studies programme,
which he did until his death in 1974. He was a prolific author, writing for
many newspapers and magazines, including The Economist, and publishing
a number of books, among them The Far East and World Politics (1936), The
Hard and Bitter Peace (1967), and Fifty Years of Communism (1968). Like
Butterfield, Hudson disliked moralistic and ideological politics, especially
Communism, and feared nuclear weapons and what they might imply. His
Hard and Bitter Peace was both a narrative history of the Cold War and a
and Historical Diplomacy’, this volume, pp. 154–170 and pp. 203–214; ‘Morality and an
International Order’, in Brian Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics,
1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 336–60; and Raison d’état: The
Relations between Morality and Government (University of Sussex: Martin Wight Memorial
Lecture, 1975).
⁴⁰ Hall, ‘History, Christianity and Diplomacy’, especially pp. 727–34. See also Coll, Wisdom
of Statecraft; Paul Sharp, ‘Herbert Butterfield, the English School and the Civilizing Virtues of
Diplomacy’ International Affairs 79(4) (2003), pp. 855–78; Karl W. Schweizer and Paul Sharp,
The International Thought of Herbert Butterfield (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).
⁴¹ See especially Butterfield, ‘Morality and an International Order’, but see also the earlier
piece, ‘The Scientific versus the Moralistic Approach in International Affairs’, International
Affairs 27(3) (1951), pp. 411–22.
⁴² Roderick MacFarquhar and Stuart R. Schram, ‘Geoffrey Hudson (1903–1974)’, The China
Quarterly 58 (1974), pp. 229–30. See also Richard Storry, ‘Geoffrey Hudson, 1903–74’, in Ian
Nish (ed.), Collected Writings of Richard Storry (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
pp. 281–84.
12  
plea for a novel means of addressing the threat of nuclear war, arguing that
an international inspection regime should be negotiated with the Soviets to
lessen tensions and place the weapons under stronger controls.⁴³
Donald Mackenzie MacKinnon (1913–94) was the odd man out in the
early British Committee. A philosopher and theologian, he had been edu-
cated at New College, Oxford. He later became the first Regius Professor of
Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen and then Norris-Hulse
Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. A charismatic and influential teacher, he
counted the novelist Iris Murdoch and the erstwhile Archbishop of Canter-
bury Rowan Williams among his pupils. He was the author of a number of
books, including A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of
Metaphysics (1974).⁴⁴ As an undergraduate at Oxford, he became friends
with Martin Wight, his sponsor for the British Committee. His contributions
to its meetings were idiosyncratic—Howard later called him ‘a charming man
but one whose discourse I found almost unintelligible’—and after the first
couple of meetings Wight apparently expressed some regret about supporting
his membership.⁴⁵ He gave papers on topics like ‘The “Philosophy of History”
and the Problems of International Relationships’—a response to Wight’s
closing remarks in ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’—and the
‘Notion of the Christian Statesman’, as well as his piece in Diplomatic Inves-
tigations on ‘Natural Law’.⁴⁶ Arguably his most lasting contribution to think-
ing about international relations, however, is his Martin Wight Memorial
Lecture on ‘Power Politics and Religious Faith’, in which he reflected on the
ethical dilemmas inherent in political action, as well as the thought of his
lifelong friend.⁴⁷ Like the other authors in Diplomatic Investigations, he also
pondered the challenges posed by nuclear weapons, publishing a book on the
topic in 1981.⁴⁸
⁴³ G. F. Hudson, The Hard and Bitter Peace: World Politics since 1945 (London: Pall Mall
Press, 1967).
⁴⁴ Stewart Sutherland, ‘Donald Mackenzie MacKinnon, 1913–1994’, Proceedings of the
British Academy 97 (1998), pp. 381–9.
⁴⁵ Howard, Captain Professor, p. 159; Williams to Butterfield, 13 June 1960, Butterfield MS
531/W305.
⁴⁶ Donald M. MacKinnon, ‘The “Philosophy of History” and the Problem of International
Relationships’ (April 1959) and ‘Some Notes on the Notion of a Christian Statesman’ (October
1961), papers for the British Committee, Butterfield MS 329.
⁴⁷ Donald M. MacKinnon, ‘Power Politics and Religious Faith’, in his Themes in Theology:
The Three-Fold Cord (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987), pp. 44–66.
⁴⁸ Donald M. MacKinnon, Creon and Antigone: Ethical Problems of Nuclear Warfare
(London: The Menard Press, 1981).
     13
(Robert James) Martin Wight (1913–72) read history at Hertford College,

Oxford, and afterwards worked in various capacities, as a seller of pacifist
books on the Strand in London, a researcher at Chatham House, and then a
school teacher at Haileybury College. He stood down from the last post
when his application to be recognized as a conscientious objector was
rejected in 1940, and for the remainder of the Second World War worked
at Oxford on Margery Perham’s project on colonial constitutions. When the
war ended, he returned to Chatham House, where he wrote the pamphlet
Power Politics (1946). In 1949, he joined Manning’s Department of Inter-
national Relations at the LSE as a reader. In 1960, he left London to take up the
post of dean of European studies and professor of history at the new Univer-
sity of Sussex. Like MacKinnon, a deeply committed and influential teacher,
Wight published little during his academic career. His intellectual reputation
rests mostly on three posthumously published works: an expanded version
of Power Politics (1976), a collection of essays, Systems of States (1977), and his
reconstituted International Theory lectures (1990).
Since their appearance, these books have reinforced the reputation
Wight acquired during his lifetime that he was an elusive but intriguing
theorist.⁴⁹ His interests lay principally in trying to discern the arguments
and theories that informed certain policies and patterns of behaviour in
international relations. In that sense, his work was an extension of the
older ‘ideas and institutions’ school of political science, in which there was
a focus on the political ideas of past thinkers and the political institutions
that their ideas supposedly inspired or simply reflected.⁵⁰ But he never
spelt out any method as such, and nor did he advance a clear doctrine or
normative theory; rather he read deeply and widely in the history of
Western political thought, produced densely referenced and circumspect
essays, and refused to make clear his own preferences on most major
issues in IR.
Like Butterfield and Wight, Michael (now Sir Michael) Howard (1922–)
read history as an undergraduate, attending Christ Church, Oxford, after
distinguished service with the Regiment of Guards in the Second World
⁴⁹ See especially Brian Porter, ‘Patterns of Thought and Practice: Martin Wight’s “Inter-
national Theory” ’, in Michael Donelan (ed.), The Reason of States: A Study in International
Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978), pp. 64–74. For a more critical view, see
Michael Nicholson, ‘The Enigma of Martin Wight’, Review of International Studies 7(1),
pp. 15–22.
⁵⁰ Hall, International Thought of Martin Wight, especially pp. 133–56.
14  
War, in which he won the Military Cross.⁵¹ Between 1947 and 1954 he
taught history at King’s College London, then military studies, founding the
Department of War Studies in 1961. He became professor of war studies in
1963, but left King’s to take up a fellowship at All Souls in 1968. He was
made Chichele Professor of the History of War in 1977, and then Regius
Professor of History at Oxford, a post that he held between 1980 and 1989.
Howard’s publications include The Franco-Prussian War (1961), War in
European History (1976), and The First World War (2003). He has published
little, however, that speaks directly to IR, but where it does touch upon the
field, his work reflects similar concerns to Butterfield’s about the deleterious
effects of ideological politics on contemporary diplomacy, and the need for
empathy, nurtured by the study of history, among other things, in IR.⁵²
Hedley Norman Bull (1932–85), the last and youngest of the contributors
to Diplomatic Investigations, studied history and philosophy at the Univer-
sity of Sydney, then went to Oxford, where he read for a BPhil in politics. In
1955, he was appointed to a lectureship in international relations at the
LSE. Between 1965 and 1967, he headed the Arms Control Unit of the
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but left to take up the post of
professor of international relations at the Australian National University in
Canberra. He succeeded Alastair Buchan as Montague Burton Professor of
International Relations at Oxford in 1977, where he remained until his death
in 1985.
Bull’s scholarship spanned strategic studies and IR theory. His books
include The Control of the Arms Race (1965) and The Anarchical Society
(1977), as well as The Expansion of International Society (1985), another
collection of papers from meetings of the British Committee, edited with
Adam Watson, who was later to its chair and a significant force in the
English School.⁵³ Among international theorists Bull is of course best known
for developing the English School’s core idea of international society, first in
his essay on ‘Society and Anarchy’ in Diplomatic Investigations, and then
at greater length in The Anarchical Society. His work drew on Wight’s
⁵¹ For further biographical details, see Michael Howard, Captain Professor: A Life in War and
Peace (London: Continuum, 2006). Howard’s brief recollections of the British Committee can
be found on pp. 159–60.
⁵² See especially Michael Howard, ‘Ideology and International Relations’, Review of Inter-
national Studies 15(1) (1989), pp. 1–10. See also his Martin Wight Memorial Lecture, ‘Ethics
and Power: in International Policy’, International Affairs 53(3) (1977), pp. 364–76.
⁵³ The literature on Bull is extensive and growing, but—because it provides an integrated
view of his theoretical and empirical work in strategic studies—see especially Robert Ayson,
Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012).
     15
interpretation of the Grotian tradition and a number of other influences,

notably that of the Scottish-Australian philosopher John Anderson.⁵⁴ His
normative theorizing, on the other hand, derived much from Butterfield’s
understanding of international order and its relationship to justice, though it
went far beyond the latter’s conservatism.⁵⁵
The Essays
The essays included in Diplomatic Investigations vary more in style than is

normally the case for an academic volume. Some are scholarly, meeting all of
the usual conventions, with extensive referencing. A few—like Butterfield’s
contribution on diplomacy—have no notes at all. The essays vary too in
length, from Wight’s dense forty-three pages on ‘Western Values’ to Hudson’s
terse piece on ‘Threats of Force’, which runs to less than five full pages,
with a single reference. Inevitably, for an edited collection, they also vary
in significance, regardless of the quality of argument.
The first chapter, Wight’s ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ is the
only one to have been published elsewhere, having appeared in the journal
International Relations in 1960. It is also by far the most cited.⁵⁶ Despite
its title, the object of the essay is to demonstrate that there was in fact
international theory to be found, but that it was not of the same quality
and nature as political theory, and nor did it have the same purpose. There
are no great texts by great authors ‘of the stature of Aristotle or Hobbes or
Locke or Rousseau’.⁵⁷ Instead, what we have is ‘scattered, unsystematic,
and mostly inaccessible to the layman’—some international law, some
pacifist musings from Erasmus onwards, some work on raison d’état,
some marginalia by political theorists, and some reflections from ‘statesmen
and diplomatists’.⁵⁸ ‘Formal international theory’, moreover, ‘resisted the
⁵⁴ Renée Jeffery, ‘Australian Realism and International Relations: John Anderson and Hedley
Bull on Ethics, Religion and Society’, International Politics 45(1) (2008), pp. 52–71.
⁵⁵ See especially Hedley Bull, Justice in International Relations: The 1983 Hagey Lectures
(Waterloo, Ont.: University of Waterloo, 1984) and, for a broader assessment, Nicholas
J. Wheeler and Tim Dunne, ‘Hedley Bull’s Pluralism of the Intellect and Solidarism of the
Will’, International Affairs 72(1) (1996), pp. 91–107.
⁵⁶ Martin Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ International Relations 2(1)
(1960), pp. 35–48. Google Scholar recorded 827 citations of this essay on 8 February 2018.
⁵⁷ Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ p. 38. Page references here and through-
out are to this edition of Diplomatic Investigations.
⁵⁸ ibid., p. 40.
16  
case for the world state’ and resisted progressivism.⁵⁹ In this way, Wight
dismisses the claims of many utopian and pacifist writers, as well as those
Marxists who looked forward to the dissolution of the state after the triumph
of the proletariat, and narrowed the scope of what he took to be ‘inter-
national theory’ still further. His conclusion, indeed, is controversial, not
widely accepted, but still provocative: the best international theory we have,
he argues, exists in historical works, since only history can capture the
contingency and uncertainty of international politics that is ‘constantly
bursting the bounds of the language in which we try to handle it’.⁶⁰
Wight’s three essays in Diplomatic Investigations—‘Why’, ‘Western
Values’, and ‘The Balance of Power’ are distillations of more than a decade’s
thought about international theory, and his experience of teaching a course
on it, first at Chicago and then at LSE.⁶¹ They are attempts to map and make
sense of international theory as it had evolved in the modern era in the
context of the post-medieval states-system.
By contrast—and despite their obvious debt to Wight’s work—Bull’s two
chapters ‘Society and Anarchy’ and ‘The Grotian Conception of Inter-
national Society’ have different stimuli and aims. Their purpose is to inter-
rogate the underlying principles of what Bull took to be the dominant
contemporary understanding of international society—what he controver-
sially termed the ‘Grotian conception’⁶²—that had informed the Covenant
of the League of Nations, the 1929 Pact of Paris, the United Nations Charter,
and the Nuremberg Tribunal.⁶³ The first essay explores the philosophical
distinctions between Hobbesian, Kantian, and Grotian accounts of inter-
national relations; the second the core elements of the Grotian conception as
it stood in the mid-twentieth century.
Bull’s argument in ‘Society and Anarchy’ is simple: both liberal interna-
tionalists and realists were wrong to suggest that order and even justice
might be obtained under the condition of international anarchy. If we look
at the ‘actual character of relations between states’, he maintains, we find
that a ‘Hobbesian state of nature’ does not in fact prevail, and we need not
either practice Machiavellian power politics nor pine for a cosmopolitan
⁵⁹ ibid., p. 42. ⁶⁰ ibid., p. 53.

⁶¹ These lectures are gathered in Wight’s International Theory: The Three Traditions.
⁶² For a useful discussion of Bull’s account of Grotius and Grotianism, see Renée Jeffery, The
Grotian Tradition in International Thought (New York: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 113–38.
⁶³ Hedley Bull, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, this volume, p. 71.
     17
world state.⁶⁴ Instead, to make sense of international society and to locate

guides for action, we can look to a series of works on international law and
the balance of power, published from the sixteenth century onwards.⁶⁵
It is into these texts and the ideas they present that Bull dives in the
‘Grotian Conception’, as a means of laying out what he took to be the
‘essence’ of that ‘doctrine’ and considering ‘the adequacy of its prescrip-
tions’.⁶⁶ He focuses on three issues in particular: the place of war in inter-
national society, the sources of law, and the status of individuals.
Concerning each, Bull compares and contrasts what he takes to be the
position of Hugo Grotius and the neo-Grotians Hersch Lauterpacht, Lassa
Oppenheim, and Cornelius van Vollenhoven. Moreover, he seeks to trace
the influence of both Grotius and the twentieth-century neo-Grotians on
recent international law, notably the Covenant, Pact of Paris, and Charter.⁶⁷
It is in this essay too that Bull develops his highly influential notion of
solidarist and pluralist understandings of international society, starting with
the contrast between the Grotian view that states display ‘solidarity, or
potential solidarity’ towards the enforcement of international law and the
pluralist view (which he does not attribute to any particular tradition) that
states ‘are capable of agreeing only for certain minimum purposes which fall
short of that of the enforcement of the law’.⁶⁸
The ‘Grotian Conception’ provoked much debate within the British
Committee when it was first presented, and has continued to do so inside
and outside the English school.⁶⁹ Wight objected that Bull offered ‘no clear
criteria for detecting Grotian influences in practice’ and complained about
his ‘cavalier use of evidence’.⁷⁰ He did not like Bull’s criticisms of Grotianism
at all, especially the latter’s suggestion that ‘the Grotian doctrine may have,
⁶⁴ Hedley Bull, ‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’, this volume, p. 58. See also
Bull’s strident critique of liberal internationalism in his The Control of the Arms Race: Dis-
armament and Arms Control in the Nuclear Age (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961).
⁶⁵ ibid., pp. 39–40.
⁶⁶ Bull, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, this volume, p. 72.
⁶⁷ ibid., pp. 81–85.
⁶⁸ ibid., p. 72. See also Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Pluralist or Solidarist Conceptions of Inter-
national Society: Bull and Vincent on Humanitarian Intervention’, Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 21(3) (1992), pp. 463–87 and John Williams, ‘Pluralism, Solidarism and
the Emergence of World Society in English School Theory’, International Relations 19(1)
(2005), pp. 19–38.
⁶⁹ Dunne, Inventing International Society, pp. 100–4.
⁷⁰ Martin Wight, ‘Comment on Hedley Bull’s Paper, “The Grotian Conception of Inter-
national Relations” ’, July 1962, p. 1.
18  
and perhaps has had, an influence positively detrimental to international

order’.⁷¹ Bull, Wight argued, treated the institutions of contemporary inter-
national society that upheld that order—‘the laws of war, neutrality, alli-
ances, sovereignty, and the obligations of citizens to bear arms in defence of
their country’—as ‘idols’, rather than as historical inheritances that might be
improved.⁷² Butterfield, on the other hand, had more sympathy for Bull’s
case, suggesting that the ‘Grotian system sets statesmen and scholars think-
ing about the justice of the world order rather than the workability of the
world order’.⁷³
MacKinnon’s difficult, allusive essay on ‘Natural Law’ raises similar
contentious issues—and exposes further divides between the Committee
members. Although sometimes overlooked, it is a significant piece, because
it speaks to one of the major concerns of the British Committee and the later
English School: the question of the sources of obligation in international
society.⁷⁴ Both Wight and Bull wrestled in different ways with this issue,
with Wight hankering after a restored Christian moral universe in which
ethics derived from natural law informed political action and Bull struggling
to find an alternative foundation for justice in a world he accepted as post-
colonial, no longer Western-dominated, and unavoidably multicultural.⁷⁵
MacKinnon’s contribution was, for the most part, clarificatory: laying out
the distinctions between different conceptions of natural law and natural
rights in the history of political thought, and then considering them in the
light of international theory. In the last couple of pages, however, he departs
from this task to advocate for a Kantian international ethics quite different
from the Grotian via media ethics associated with the English School.⁷⁶
This argument is a subtle but pointed critique of religious realists like
MacKinnon’s friend Wight, who sometimes indulged in what the former
calls ‘vague and generalized denigration of the technological revolutions
⁷¹ Bull, ‘Grotian Conception’, p. 91.

⁷² Wight, ‘Comment on Hedley Bull’s Paper’, p. 2.
⁷³ Herbert Butterfield, ‘Alternative Conceptions of International Law’, July 1962, p. 9.
⁷⁴ We are indebted to William Bain for this insight.
⁷⁵ On Wight, see especially William Bain, ‘Rival Traditions of Natural Law: Martin Wight
and the Theory of International Society’, International History Review 36(5) (2014), pp. 943–60.
For Bull’s views, see his The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd ed.
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 74–95 and his Justice in International Relations.
⁷⁶ Molly Cochran, ‘Charting the Ethics of the English School: What “Good” Is There in a
Middle Ground Ethics?’ International Studies Quarterly 53(1) (2009), pp. 203–25.
     19
through which we are living’, as well as musing that only a return to God
could save humanity from ever-more destructive conflict.⁷⁷
This view surfaces only fleetingly towards the end of Wight’s ‘Western
Values in International Relations’. Arguably as influential as Bull’s three
contributions—and certainly as well-cited⁷⁸—the chapter distils Wight’s
analysis of the ‘three traditions’ of international theory he explored in his
Chicago and LSE lectures of the late 1950s, shifting away from the ‘tradi-
tions’ approach to the history of ideas towards a thematic one used also in
later essays.⁷⁹ It explores a range of Western thinkers’ treatments of four
topics: international society, the maintenance of order, intervention, and
international morality, focusing on what he terms the ‘Whig or “constitu-
tional” ’ tradition of thought he thinks represents the mainstream.⁸⁰ It
provides, moreover, the best glimpse at the range and creativity of Wight’s
scholarship, as well as his elusive qualities as an intellectual—despite the
richness of his account of ‘Western Values’, he fails fully to endorse them.
Butterfield and Wight’s respective chapters on ‘The Balance of Power’
reflect both distinctive approaches and preferences. The first is a relatively
conventional study, a search for the origin of the phrase in Western thought,
and an analysis of its evolution since its emergence in the mid-seventeenth
century.⁸¹ Butterfield argues there is little in the way of a modern theory of
the balance of power in the Renaissance, in the work of Machiavelli,
Guiciardini, Francis Bacon, or Philip de Commynes, but finds it flourishing
in the age of Louis XVI, especially in the work of François Fénelon, Arch-
bishop of Cambrai.⁸² This intellectual history, he suggests, reminds us that
international order, brought about by such systems of thought, are contin-
gent and ‘not a thing bestowed by nature, but . . . a matter of refined thought,
careful contrivance, and elaborate artifice’.⁸³
⁷⁷ Donald MacKinnon, ‘Natural Law’, this volume, p. 106. On Wight’s religious views and
their relation to international relations, see Hall, International Thought of Martin Wight,
pp. 21–42.
⁷⁸ On 8 February 2018, Google Scholar recorded 314 citations of ‘Western Values’, compared
to 267 for Bull’s ‘Society and Anarchy’ and 412 for the latter’s ‘Grotian Conception’.
⁷⁹ On Wight’s approach to the history of international thought, see Hall, International
Thought of Martin Wight, pp. 134–56.
⁸⁰ Martin Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, this volume, p. 112. On Wight
and Whiggism, see Ian Hall, ‘Martin Wight, the Whigs and Western Values in International
Relations’, International History Review 36(5) (2014), pp. 961–81.
⁸¹ Herbert Butterfield, ‘The Balance of Power’, this volume, pp. 154–70.
⁸² ibid., p. 162. ⁸³ ibid., p. 169.
20  
Wight’s chapter on ‘The Balance of Power’ is a more complex effort.⁸⁴ Its

aim is to establish the various meanings of the term in Western thought,
using a comparative method he deployed in his International Theory lec-
tures and elsewhere, including ‘Western Values’. He distinguishes between
nine meanings, of different levels of sophistication and appeal, each with
different implications for diplomatic practice and international society.
The last five pieces in the book are relatively short and vary in signifi-
cance. Hudson’s ‘Collective Security and Military Alliances’ is a brief but
thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of both arrangements in an age in
which modern technology can permit ‘decisive operations at the very outset
of war, or even before declaration of it’.⁸⁵ Butterfield’s ‘The New Diplomacy
and Historical Diplomacy’ is longer, and more keenly argued. It is a root and
branch attack on the ‘new diplomacy’ of the inter-war period, which he
suggests was ‘a facile attempt to pander to the self-esteem of the masses’,
shot through with ‘self-righteousness’ and an ‘unhistorical attitude to the
past’.⁸⁶ It is also a case for a reassessment of the ‘old diplomacy’, a search for
‘rules or maxims [of diplomacy] possessing a permanent validity’, and for a
‘historical diplomacy’ that has at its core a sounder understanding of history
and a proper attitude to the past.⁸⁷ Like Wight’s ‘Western Values’, the essay
is a distillation of arguments made by its author for some time—Butterfield
had been advocating for a more historical attitude to international relations
since the 1940s, one that was more ‘scientific’, in the sense of being calm and
balanced, and less ‘moralistic’.⁸⁸
Howard’s chapter on ‘War as an Instrument of Policy’, by contrast, is
more of a starting point than a capstone. It marks the beginning of its author’s
lasting engagement with the thought of Karl von Clausewitz which led to a new
translation of On War (1976) and a number of other significant works.⁸⁹ The
essay provides a sympathetic reading of Clausewitz’s best-known but often
⁸⁴ It should also be noted that Wight addressed this topic in several essays spanning four
decades—in Power Politics at the start of his career, but also in ‘The Balance of Power and
International Order’, in Alan James (ed.) The Bases of International Order: Essays in Honour of
C. A. W. Manning (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 85–115.
⁸⁵ G. F. Hudson, ‘Collective Security and Military Alliances’, this volume, p. 198.
⁸⁶ Herbert Butterfield, ‘The New Diplomacy and Historical Diplomacy’, this volume, p. 204.
⁸⁷ ibid., p. 205.
⁸⁸ See, for instance, Herbert Butterfield, Christianity and History (London: Collins, 1949) and
his ‘The Scientific versus the Moralistic Approach in International Affairs’, International Affairs
27(4) (1951), pp. 411–22.
⁸⁹ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press 1976). See also Michael Howard, Clausewitz: A Very Short Intro-
duction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), first published in 1983.
     21
misinterpreted claim, noting its normativity: the argument is that war should
always be controlled and limited by policy, lest it descend into a ‘contest’ of
‘life and death, from pure hatred’. ‘An apolitical war’, as Howard summarizes
Clausewitz’s position, ‘is something not so much impossible as stupid and
wrong.’⁹⁰
In his second piece of the book, Hudson examines ‘Threats of Force in
International Relations’, distinguishing between implicit and explicit threats,
and ultimatums. It considers, in particular, the challenges inherent in
making and managing threats in a nuclear age, pointing especially to the
failure of Soviet coercive diplomacy in the 1950s and early 1960s. In
Howard’s second contribution, and the concluding chapter of the Diplo-
matic Investigations, the focus shifts from the contemporary to the theoret-
ical: what ‘problems’, he asked, might we face in a ‘disarmed world’, should
one eventuate. Howard argues that even if the world was disarmed, two
sources of conflict would remain and might intensify: cultural tensions,
generated by the expansion of states and the absorption of other communi-
ties; and revolutionary movements, nationalist or otherwise, within states.⁹¹
A disarmed world might not therefore be a more peaceful world, especially if
it was not possible to create some kind of ‘supra-national state’ to manage
these and other sources of conflict.
Appraisals and Influence
Diplomatic Investigations was a commercial success for Allen & Unwin and
for Harvard University Press, which bought the publication rights for the
United States. It sold about 8,500 copies in the four years after it first
appeared in 1966, with a significant proportion of those sales made in the
United States.⁹² It was not, however, widely reviewed on either side of the
Atlantic, with only a few notices appearing in journals in the late 1960s.
Moreover, the reviews that did appear—conditioned as they were by on-going
debate among British and American scholars over the discipline and its
proper methods—were mixed.
⁹⁰ Michael Howard, ‘War as an Instrument of Policy’, this volume, pp. 218–9.

⁹¹ Michael Howard, ‘Problems of a Disarmed World’, this volume, p. 236.
⁹² Vigezzi, British Committee on the Theory of International, p. 69, n. 14. The UK publisher,
Allen & Unwin, clearly anticipated this success, with plans for an initial print run of 3,000–6,500
copies conveyed to Butterfield in 1965. See also Wight’s passing observation that ‘[t]o my great
surprise Diplomatic Investigations seems to be selling well in the United States, and is even
making a little money’ in Wight to Matthew Melko, 21 April 1969, in the authors’ possession.
22  
The most appreciative review came from Hans J. Morgenthau, an admirer

of Wight’s work in particular. Morgenthau had earlier been so impressed by
‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ when it had first appeared in
International Relations in 1960 that he had penned a fulsome response: ‘The
Intellectual and Political Functions of a Theory of International Relations’
(1962). In that piece he wrote of Wight’s essay:
Its fourteen pages contain more insights into the intellectual issues posed
by theoretical concern with international relations than a whole shelf of
books and articles which, following the fashion of the day, spin out theories
about theories of international relations and embark upon esoteric meth-
odological studies about how to go about theorising about theories of
international relations.⁹³
Morgenthau was excited too by Diplomatic Investigations, proclaiming the

book ‘an outstanding success’ that ‘tells us . . . a great deal about theoretical
principles of international politics worth knowing’. Like other reviewers,
Morgenthau situated it in the context of the ‘Second Great Debate’, and
praised it as a counterblast to behaviouralism and allied approaches. He
wished, he wrote, that:
every student of international politics, and for that matter every teacher,
would put the insights . . . derived from, say, the two contributions of
Martin Wight against the theoretical propositions of any number of
volumes of behaviorism [sic], systems analysis, game theory, decision-
making, and so forth. Such a comparison would not only put the merits
of this book in the proper light, but it would also provide a healthy
corrective for our present academic priorities.⁹⁴
Other US-based readers of Diplomatic Investigations were less enthusiastic.

In the American Political Science Review, Don C. Piper from the University
of Maryland was polite, but lukewarm. Although he thought the essays
maintained a ‘high level of quality’, he predicted the book would receive a
⁹³ Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The Intellectual and Political Functions of a Theory of International

Relations’, in his Politics in the 20th Century, Vol. I: The Decline of Democratic Politics (Chicago,
IL: Chicago University Press, 1962), pp. 62–78. We are grateful to Richard Devetak for
reminding us of this quotation.
⁹⁴ Hans J. Morgenthau, review of Diplomatic Investigations, Political Science Quarterly 82(3)
(1967), pp. 461–63. Wight’s work was also admired by Kenneth W. Thompson, once of the
Rockefeller Foundation and fellow classical realist, who included the British thinker in his
Masters of International Thought (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980),
pp. 44–66.
     23
‘mixed but predictable reaction from American scholars’. Those who ‘seek to
discern through the study of history patterns of international relations, who
believe that normative considerations are appropriate in the study of inter-
national relations . . . will find the volume fruitful and stimulating’, Piper
argued, but those who prefer the ‘systematic development and verification
of explanatory and predictive theories will find this volume does not meas-
ure up to their goals’.⁹⁵
In Morton Kaplan’s review, for the Journal of International Affairs,
Piper’s predictions were realized. Kaplan complained that it was ‘difficult
to disentangle Wight’s arguments’ in ‘Why Is There No International
Theory?’ and attacked his argument that historical writings did a better
job at capturing international relations than theoretical ones. He praised
Bull’s essays as ‘historical sociology of the first order’ but objected to what he
considered unnecessary references to old thinkers. Overall, after a lengthy
dissection of Geoffrey Hudson’s chapter, Kaplan judged all the authors
guilty of ‘[m]istaking urbanity and superficial ease of style for clarity of
analysis’. What they presented was not clear and helpful analysis of import-
ant phenomena in international relations, he concluded, but rather a ‘polite
conversation interspersed with a profusion of pretentious, and often mis-
used, references’.⁹⁶
In Britain, the initial reception of the book was less hostile, but still critical
in some places. In International Affairs, Joseph Frankel opined that the
essays were in the ‘best tradition of British scholarship’. ‘Eschewing fash-
ionable jargon’, Frankel argued, ‘they are well written and urbane’ and ‘tie up
the analysis of modern life with classical political thought and . . . stress the
moral elements’.⁹⁷ In History, by contrast, Frank Spencer from the Univer-
sity of Hull opined that the book took an excessively ‘high moral tone’ and
complained that it was not ‘sullied by discussion of power politics’.⁹⁸
All this said, Diplomatic Investigations was still recognized on both sides
of the Atlantic as a major contribution to IR. William C. Olsen included the
book as one of twenty-six ‘landmark’ works in the ‘growth of the discipline’
⁹⁵ Don C. Piper, review of Diplomatic Investigations, American Political Science Review 62(2)
(1968), pp. 679–80.
⁹⁶ Morton Kaplan, review of Diplomatic Investigations, Journal of International Affairs 21(2),
pp. 307–9.
⁹⁷ Joseph Frankel, review of Diplomatic Investigations, International Affairs 43(1) (1967),
pp. 125–7.
⁹⁸ Frank Spencer, review of Diplomatic Investigations, History 54(180) (1969), pp. 156–7. The
book was not reviewed in a number of outlets where one might expect it to have been, including
International Relations, Political Quarterly, and Political Studies.
24  
in his contribution to that important stock-take, The Aberystwyth Papers:

International Politics 1919–69 (1972).⁹⁹ And although British scholars of the
late 1960s and 1970s toyed with new approaches to the field—neo-function-
alism, for example, Marxist-inspired structuralism, or formal modelling—
Butterfield and Wight’s collection helped shape the work of those who stuck
with traditionalist or ‘classical’ ones, or sought to blend it with others.¹⁰⁰
A series of books and articles appeared in which the authors concerned
themselves, as Diplomatic Investigations had, with ‘international society’ or
the ‘society of states’, and shared key assumptions, themes, or arguments
evident in that volume. Many were written by scholars at the LSE or their
students; a significant proportion were inspired by Wight’s lectures or his
essays on international theory. They included works like Robert Purnell’s
The Society of States (1973) and, of course, Hedley Bull’s enormously
influential The Anarchical Society (1977). And they also included important
studies on the history of international theory—Wight’s central focus—like
Michael Donelan’s collection, The Reason of States (1978) or James Mayall’s,
The Community of States (1981).¹⁰¹
Indeed, as Hidemi Suganami argues, ‘[b]y the late 1970s . . . it was possible
to see that a network of scholars was gaining momentum and influence in the
British study and teaching of IR. These scholars, old and young, seemed to be
interrelated through some overlapping personal linkages, all saying broadly
similar things, often under similar titles, about international relations and the
way to study that subject.’¹⁰² What united this group was a commitment to
traditionalism and to a broadly interpretive orientation; a common focus on
‘international society’ understood as a ‘cluster of social rules, conventions,
usages, and practices’.¹⁰³ Importantly, they also saw themselves building
upon a legacy bequeathed by key members of the early British Committee,
especially Wight, and by others, including Manning.¹⁰⁴
⁹⁹ William C. Olsen, ‘The Growth of the Discipline’, in Brian Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth
Papers: International Politics, 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 21. Olsen
described the book as ‘exemplifying an older tradition of thought’ which ‘provided a useful
counterpoint to American approaches to theory’.
¹⁰⁰ For a discussion, see Hall, Dilemmas of Decline, pp. 126–9.
¹⁰¹ Michael Donelan (ed.). The Reason of States (London: Allen & Unwin, 1978); James
Mayall (ed.) The Community of States (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981).
¹⁰² Hidemi Suganami, ‘The English School of International Relations: Historical Develop-
ment’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies (2017), DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/
9780190846626.013.40.
¹⁰³ Hidemi Suganami, ‘The Structure of Institutionalism: An Anatomy of British Mainstream
International Relations’, International Relations 7(5) (1983), p. 2365.
¹⁰⁴ See especially Suganami, ‘The Structure of Institutionalism’.
     25
At this point, what the group lacked, of course, was a name. When one
did emerge, it came from its critics within British IR, not from its adherents.
In 1981, Roy Jones famously argued that what he termed the ‘English school
of international relations’, as well as the approach for which it stood, was so
flawed it needed to be closed down. While the school claimed the title
‘classical’, Jones thought, it had ‘cut itself off from the classical themes of
political thought’ by claiming, as Wight had, that there was ‘no International
Theory’ worthy of the name.¹⁰⁵ The English School’s preferred approach, he
asserted, was thus rootless and obscure—part philosophically Idealist,
thanks to Charles Manning’s influence on the LSE-based or originating
scholars, wholly hostile to modern social science, and, thanks to Wight,
part Toynbeean, in its concern for universal history. Its core concept—
international society—was vague and equally unhelpful. In Jones’s view,
‘[t]o speak of a society of a variety of structures or movements or theories
would seem to be meaningless’.¹⁰⁶
It took several years before formal replies to Jones’s attack appeared.¹⁰⁷ It
took a few more before some scholars sought to reclaim the label ‘English
School’ and to use it to describe the tradition in which they conceived
themselves to be working. In the early 1990s, as Anglo-American IR as a
whole questioned the usefulness and impact of the various Cold-War-era
theories, a new English School emerged, arguing that the ‘classical approach’
and the work it had helped generate still held important insights of con-
temporary relevance.¹⁰⁸ To make that case, it re-examined and rewrote the
history of British IR and the English School, according a central role to the
work of the British Committee—and Diplomatic Investigations in
particular—in the story of its evolution.¹⁰⁹
¹⁰⁵ Roy E. Jones, ‘The English School of International Relations: A Case for Closure’, Review
of International Studies 7(1), p. 2.
¹⁰⁶ Jones, ‘The English School’, p. 5.
¹⁰⁷ See Sheila Grader, ‘The English School of International Relations: Evidence and Evalu-
ation’, Review of International Studies 14(1) (1988), pp. 29–44, and Peter Wilson, ‘The English
School of International Relations: A Reply to Sheila Grader’, Review of International Studies
15(1) (1989), pp. 49–58.
¹⁰⁸ Among other works, see Barry Buzan, ‘From International System to International
Society: Structural Realism and Regime Theory Meet the English School’, International Organ-
ization 47(3) (1993), pp. 327–52; Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins (eds), International Society
after the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996); Robert
H. Jackson, ‘Is There a Classical International Theory?’, in Ken Booth, Steve Smith, and Marysia
Zalewski (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), pp. 203–18.
¹⁰⁹ See especially Dunne, Inventing International Society (1998). A lively debate continues
about the history of the school. For some different perspectives, see Buzan, An Introduction to
26  
Diplomatic Investigations and the English School
For the contemporary English School, as one of its leading historians puts it,
the publication of Diplomatic Investigations ‘was a major event’, mainly
because of what it said, but also because it justified the existence of the
British Committee to its funders and made possible other significant later
works, including The Expansion of International Society (1985).¹¹⁰ But the
book is not just important to the English School’s history. Its essays, themes,
and approach have acted—and continue to act—as provocations for IR
theorists within the School and outside it. In particular, the volume has
played a major role in elevating international theory to become ‘a dominant
voice within the [IR] discourse’ in Britain and further afield, pushing aside
other sub-disciplines once more influential, like area studies or foreign
policy analysis.¹¹¹ It also stimulated a renewed concern for history, especially
the history of international thought, alongside the interest in international
history and historical sociology generated by other English School texts,
especially the Expansion. Finally, it became a major reference point for
debates in normative theory and international ethics, notably concerning
state sovereignty and intervention, that had significant impacts on state
practice during the 1990s and 2000s.
The Rise of International Theory
The 1980s and 1990s saw the re-emergence of international theory, in various
forms, in IR.¹¹² That development paralleled bigger shifts in the social
sciences, charted most clearly in Quentin Skinner’s landmark collection,
the English School of International Relations; Linklater and Suganami, English School of Inter-
national Relations; Hidemi Suganami, ‘British Institutionalists, or the English School, 20 Years
On’, International Relations 17(3) (2003), pp. 253–71; Vigezzi, British Committee on the Theory
of International Politics.
¹¹⁰ Hidemi Suganami, ‘The English School of International Relations: Historical Develop-
ment’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies (2017), DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/
9780190846626.013.40. See also Hedley Bull and Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of
International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985).
¹¹¹ Chris Brown, ‘IR Theory in Britain—the New Black?’, Review of International Studies
32(4) (2006), p. 677.
¹¹² On the rise and fall of international theory as a subfield, see the ‘The End of International
Relations Theory’, edited by Tim Dunne, Lene Hansen and Colin Wight, special issue of
European Journal of International Relations 19(3) (2013), pp. 405–665.
     27
The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (1985). But it also
involved a major conversation with earlier attempts to construct or analyse
theories of IR, from the 1920s to the 1960s, including those included in
Diplomatic Investigations.¹¹³ Bull’s and Wight’s essays, in particular, were
taken up once more by scholars in IR, who found in them approaches and
lines of inquiry worth pursuing, in conjunction with their own. Not all were
enthusiastic, of course, about this renewed interest in the interpretive and
normative theory of the 1950s and 1960s, including that contained in the
book. Positivists like Kenneth N. Waltz continued to argue that the English
School and other classical theorists ‘did theory in a sense that is not recog-
nized as theory by philosophers of science’.¹¹⁴ But those working outside that
paradigm—and even some sympathetic to it, like Barry Buzan¹¹⁵—believed
this engagement with past theory was worthwhile.
In the context of the revival of interpretive and normative theory, Wight’s
‘Why Is There No International Theory?’ loomed large. Provocative as it was,
his argument was endorsed and traduced in fairly equal measure. In an
influential review of IR published in 1994, Wight’s idea that there was some
kind of fault-line between ‘International Theory’ and ‘Political Theory’ was
featured as the first of ten dominant ‘self images’ of the discipline.¹¹⁶ This and
other stark dualisms laid out by Wight—domestic/international, progress/
survival, political theory/historical interpretation—provoked responses not
just to his argument, but its underpinnings. What unifies these dualisms,
many recognized, is an important claim about the kind of theory we can
generate in an anarchical system of sovereign states: in Wight’s words, while
political thought can be ‘the theory of the good life’, international theory, in
anarchy, can never be more than ‘the theory of survival’.¹¹⁷
¹¹³ On these earlier debates, see especially Guilhot (ed.), Invention of International Relations
Theory.
¹¹⁴ Fred Halliday, Justin Rosenberg, and Ken Waltz, ‘Interview with Ken Waltz’. Review of
International Studies 24(3) (1998), p. 385. Waltz’s mature understanding of theory is outlined in
‘Laws and Theories’ in his Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley,
1979), pp. 1–17. Earlier in his career, Waltz had been more sympathetic to Wight’s work. After
hearing Wight lecture on international theory at Chicago, Waltz wrote to praise him for taking
‘seriously the proposition that political theory in the old style can help . . . to understand the
international politics of the present’ (Waltz to Wight, 20 March 1959, Wight MS 233 1/9).
¹¹⁵ Buzan’s attempt to wed the English school to a more modernist research agenda,
conceived along Lakatosian lines, is ambitious if controversial within the school. See especially
his ‘The English School: An Underexploited Resource in IR’, Review of International Studies 27
(3) (2001), pp. 471–88.
¹¹⁶ Ken Booth and Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge:
Polity, 1994), pp. 6–7.
¹¹⁷ Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory’, this volume, p. 53.
28  
Critics challenged the apparent pessimism of this idea that contemporary

international relations constitute a domain of ‘recurrence and repetition’.¹¹⁸
More than one influential theorist of the early 1990s objected. R. B. J.
Walker, for instance, called that claim ‘a fundamentally misleading point
from which to start an analysis of modern world politics’.¹¹⁹ Walker and
others argued that Wight had afforded excessive legitimacy to the sovereign
state, rather than providing an understanding of how and why this form of
national territorial entity came to prevail over other possible forms of
political community, how the domestic and international domains presume
one another, and how they might be transformed. Normative theorists also
challenged the domestic/international divide, arguing that political theory
and practice has, for many centuries, demonstrated the existence of moral
obligations beyond the state to common humanity, for example.¹²⁰ Once we
put ideas of rights and responsibilities at the centre of the discipline, they
suggested, it is ‘no longer possible or necessary to specify in advance a
distinction between domestic and international political theory’.¹²¹
Theorists identifying with the English School understandably viewed
‘Why?’ more sympathetically. Robert H. Jackson argued that Wight did
not rule out the possibility of international theories that could foster the
good life as well as ensure survival. He recognized that although Wight
maintained that international theories had to grapple with the ‘ultimate
experience of life and death, national existence and national extinction’,
some allowed for other goals to be pursued.¹²² Some theorists recognized, as
did Thomas Hobbes, that the state of nature was for states, in contrast to
¹¹⁸ For a useful set of critical responses, see James Der Derian (ed.) International Theory:
Critical Investigations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).
¹¹⁹ R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 48. See also Richard Ashley, ‘The Poverty of Neorealism’,
in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986), pp. 255–300. For a gender theory reading, see Cynthia Weber, ‘Reading Martin Wight’s
“Why Is There No International Theory?” as History’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 23(4)
(1998), pp. 451–69.
¹²⁰ This argument is developed in Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of
International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982).
¹²¹ Chris Brown, ‘Sorry Comfort? The Case against “International Theory” ’, in F. Pfetsch
(ed.) International Relations and Pan-Europe: Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Findings
(Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1993), pp. 92–3. We should not create an impression that all political
theorists reject the distinction between the domestic and the international. John Rawls and other
contractarian theorists contend that it is possible to debate competing conceptions of the good
within states in a way that is not possible between states.
¹²² Wight, ‘Why Is There No International Theory?’, p. 53.
     29
individuals, not ‘intolerable’. Others argued that sovereignty itself has ethical
worth.¹²³ The institution of the sovereign state could enable the liberty of at
least some peoples. Where ‘the political interest or good of one state may be
discordant with that of another’, diplomacy, law, and the balance of power
can provide a tolerable order among sovereigns that can allow the good life
to be pursued within state borders.¹²⁴
This reading of Wight edges from a realist account of world politics,
emphasizing ‘recurrence and repetition’, towards one that conceives his
thought as more ‘rationalist’ or ‘Grotian’. Such reinterpretation of his
thought was enabled by the publication in 1991 of a collection of his lectures
on international theory given at Chicago and the LSE in the 1950s, and
meticulously edited by Brian Porter and Gabriele Wight. International
Theory: The Three Traditions provided a different vantage point from
which to view Wight’s Diplomatic Investigations essays and later commen-
taries that had tended to characterize his thought as essentially realist.¹²⁵
These lectures showed him comparing and contrasting various elements of
what he took to be the realist (or Machiavellian), rationalist (or Grotian),
and revolutionist (or Kantian) traditions of Western international thought
in the years immediately prior to the composition of those essays. They
made it clear that although Wight went to some lengths to maintain a kind
of neutrality regarding the traditions in front of his students, his ‘prejudices’,
as he put it in the last lecture, were unequivocally ‘Rationalist’.¹²⁶
The Return to History
The early 1990s also saw a renewed interest in history within IR, especially
concerning intellectual history. And here again, Diplomatic Investigations
served as a stimulus. While other English School texts—notably The Expansion
of International Society—continued to attract attention from those concerned
with grand narratives and historical sociology,¹²⁷ Butterfield’s and Wight’s
¹²³ See especially Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Society, and
Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
¹²⁴ Robert H. Jackson, ‘Martin Wight, International Theory and the Good Life’, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies 19(2) (1990), p. 265.
¹²⁵ See, for example, Hedley Bull, ‘Introduction: Martin Wight and the Study of International
Relations’, in Wight, System of States, pp. 1–20, and Nicholson, ‘The Enigma of Martin Wight’.
¹²⁶ Wight, International Theory, p. 268. For a discussion, see also Hall, International Thought
of Martin Wight, pp. 133–56.
¹²⁷ See especially Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative
Historical Analysis (London: Routledge, 1993), Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International
30  
essays, in particular, became the focus of a growing number of scholars

interested in the history of international thought.¹²⁸ They recognized that
Diplomatic Investigations offered pioneering—if problematic—studies of past
international theorists and their ideas, particularly in ‘Why?’, ‘Western Values’,
and the two pieces on ‘The Balance of Power’, even if they often disagreed with
the approach taken by Butterfield and Wight.
The new historians of international thought objected especially to Wight’s
use of the ‘three traditions’ as a schema for presenting intellectual history.
They acknowledged that Wight had done a considerable service in excavat-
ing and bringing to the surface a range of hitherto marginal and inaccessible
texts, both in his lectures and the Diplomatic Investigations essays. Vari-
ously, however, they took up Quentin Skinner’s or John G. Gunnell’s cri-
tiques of the use of ‘traditions’ to construct ‘epic’ histories of political
thought, and argued that Wight had done violence to past thinkers and
theories by trying to corral them into three ahistorical categories.¹²⁹
Key ideas from the book have inspired other historically oriented studies.
Ian Clark’s focus on what he calls the ‘operational principles’ of the modern
states-system in a series of books self-consciously echoes the emphasis
Butterfield and Wight laid on exploring the inner workings of international
society ‘the way it functions, the obligations of its members, its tested and
established principles of political intercourse’.¹³⁰ Like Diplomatic Investiga-
tions, Clark’s work weaves together diplomatic and international history
with analysis of the ideas that informed or critiqued practice, whether they
Systems in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Tim Dunne and
Christian Reus-Smit (eds), The Globalization of International Society (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2017).
¹²⁸ On this renewed interest, see especially David Armitage, ‘The Fifty Years’ Rift: Intellectual
History and International Relations’, Modern Intellectual History 1(1) (2004), pp. 97–109, and
Duncan Bell, ‘International Relations: The Dawn of a Historiographical Turn?’ British Journal of
Politics and International Relations 3(1) (2001), pp. 115–26.
¹²⁹ Ian Hall, ‘The History of International Thought and International Relations Theory:
From Context to Interpretation’, International Relations 31(3) (2017), pp. 241–60. For a
Skinnerian critique, see Armitage, ‘Fifty Years’ Rift’. For one inspired by Gunnell, see Brian
C. Schmidt, ‘The Historiography of Academic International Relations’, Review of International
Studies 20(4) (1994), pp. 349–67. For an overview, see David Boucher, ‘History of International
Thought: Text and Context’, in Chris Brown and Robyn Eckersley (eds) The Oxford Handbook
of International Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
¹³⁰ Ian Clark, The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 1; Butterfield and Wight, ‘Preface’, p. v.
     31
are ‘ideologies of international order’, accounts of legitimacy, or understand-

ings of the role and responsibilities of hegemons.¹³¹
The Rise of Normative Theory
Perhaps the most important legacy of Diplomatic Investigations, however, is

the way in which it has helped inspire the revival of normative theory and
international ethics within and beyond the English School.¹³² Here, Wight’s
complex chapter on ‘Western Values in International Relations’ played a key
role, alongside Bull’s two contributions: ‘Society and Anarchy’ and the
‘Grotian Conception of International Society’. In a way, indeed, Wight’s
essay set up the problem, and Bull attempted to address it.
In ‘Western Values’ as in much of his work, one of Wight’s major concerns
was the sources of obligation in modern international society. What set of
values, he asked, obliged practitioners to obey ethical and legal rules when they
considered how and why to act? In ancient Greece or medieval Christendom,
Wight observed, shared values existed which shaped choices and behaviour. In
modern international society, however, the existence of such values was less
clear. The Reformation and secularization had eroded the power of Christian
frameworks, as had encounters with non-Christian peoples, and the absorp-
tion of non-Christian societies into a hitherto exclusively European inter-
national society. The rise of nationalism had from the late eighteenth century
exacerbated this situation, since it implied that the highest loyalty of any
individual was to his or her nation-state, not to any wider group. And
decolonization worsened matters still further, bringing a range of societies
with different cultural values into international society, some adhering to
virulently nationalistic or anti-Western doctrines.¹³³
¹³¹ See Clark, Hierarchy of States; Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005); Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ian Clark, Hegemony in International Society (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011). This work also extends earlier studies of particular ideas in
international society, such as R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974) and James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also Richard Little, The Balance of Power
in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007).
¹³² For a contemporary assessment of this development, see Steve Smith, ‘The Forty Years’
Detour: The Resurgence of Normative Theory in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal
of International Studies 21(3) (1992), pp. 489–506.
¹³³ Hall, International Thought of Martin Wight, pp. 126–31.
32  
Wight’s essay on ‘Western Values’ was thus an attempt to tease out the
norms and rules of contemporary international society, understood from
various different perspectives, and to locate the values that generated
obligations—the values, in other words, that oblige practitioners to adhere
to those norms and rules. He recognized at the start that ‘Western men’, to
use his anachronistic language, ‘are perhaps more various in their range
of beliefs than the men [sic] of any other culture’. But he argued that they
generally valued liberty and ‘constitutional government’ as the means to
ensure it.¹³⁴ These values underpinned an international society in which
there was international law that upheld common standards; a distribution of
power that is compatible with the liberty of states; a right of self-defence and
a right to use force to uphold common standards and if the balance of power
is threatened; a presupposition that the use of force is ‘most fully justified’
when undertaken by international society collectively, but one that does not
exclude the possibility that unilateral action should be ‘deserving of the
approval of the rest’.¹³⁵ Wight implied too that this international society
was informed too by some sense of what he called a ‘natural law ethic’.¹³⁶
‘Western Values’ did not begin to answer whether the institutions and
purposes of European international society were resilient enough to cope
with decolonization, which created dozens of new states with varying cap-
acities, encompassing different religious, cultural beliefs, and historical
experiences. Elsewhere in his work, however, he implied that he was pes-
simistic about its prospects, fearing that the ‘revolt against the West’ would
undermine the ‘cultural unity’ needed to sustain it.¹³⁷ The result, he thought,
would be the ‘deliquescence’ (his term) of the ‘principle of international
obligation’ and a slide into a world of crude power politics unrestrained by
ethical considerations.¹³⁸
Bull, for his part, took a quite different line.¹³⁹ In his two contributions
to Diplomatic Investigations, and later in his Anarchical Society, he suggested
that there were sources of obligation apart from those that arose in a ‘solidarist’
world from shared cultural inheritance or substantive moral agreement.
¹³⁴ Wight, ‘Western Values’, p. 111. ¹³⁵ Wight, ‘Western Values’ p. 126.
¹³⁶ Wight, ‘Western Values’, p. 151.
¹³⁷ Wight, Systems of States, p. 33. On Wight and the ‘revolt’, see Ian Hall, ‘The Revolt against
the West: Decolonization and its Repercussions in British International Thought, 1960–1985’,
International History Review 33(1) (2011), pp. 43–64.
¹³⁸ Wight, ‘Brutus in Foreign Policy: The Memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden’, International
Affairs 36(3) (1960), pp. 308–9.
¹³⁹ In part, this was because Bull was more sanguine about decolonization and its actual and
potential effects, as Ayson has shown in his Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power.
Another random document with
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At the outset I was more fortunate than on the previous day, for
when I had gotten up close to them I found in front of me cows and
calves, young things of one or two years old. Singling out a fat young
cow, distinguished by her glossy coat of hair, I forced my horse right
up against her and brought her down at the second shot. I pulled
rein, stopping my horse as suddenly as was possible at the
breakneck speed at which he was going, and in another moment the
herd had spread out, and I was completely surrounded by the
rushing mass of animals which my attack had set in motion.
The air was so clouded with dust that I could hardly see more
than twenty yards from where I was standing, near the carcass of the
cow I had killed. There was danger of being run over by them, but
they separated as they approached, passing on either side of me, a
few yards distant. After a while the rushing crowd thinned, and up
rode Captain Chiles exclaiming: “Why don’t you kill another?”
Fifty yards from us they were rushing by, all in the same
direction. I again dashed into the midst of them, pressing my horse in
pursuit of another young cow. She shot ahead of everything,
increasing her speed so that I could hardly keep sight of her. While
thus running at full speed my horse struck a calf with his breast,
knocking the calf down flat, and almost throwing himself also. I
pulled up as quickly as possible, turned around and shot the
prostrate calf before it could get up. So I had two dead in, say twenty
minutes. After this day’s experience I had no trouble in killing all the
buffalo we needed for our own consumption. For a week or ten days
they were hardly out of sight. We found them as far west as Pawnee
Rock. All told, I killed about twenty on the journey out and back. A
good steak, cut from the loin of a buffalo cow, broiled on the coals
with a thin slice of bacon attached to it to improve its flavor, was
“good eating,” and I soon became an accomplished broiler.
IV.
Companions of Voyage.
Before reaching Pawnee Rock we overtook a train of thirty

wagons belonging to the leading freighters of the West, Majors,
Russell & Waddell, with which we traveled to Fort Union, their freight
being consigned to that post. This train had thirty wagons, built, I
believe, in Philadelphia, with heavy iron axles and spindles, which
seemed superior to any others I had seen on the prairies. Hagan
was wagonmaster and Hines his assistant. The former was a sandy-
haired man, who rode a large bay mule, a drowsy animal with
immense lop ears that moved back and forth as he walked. This
ungainly mule, I found out, in a day or two afterwards, had his good
points. He could run as fast and get up as close to a buffalo as any
horse in either outfit.
Notwithstanding Hagan’s generally uncouth appearance, he was
a man of sterling worth and a capital hand at killing buffalo.
Subsequently we joined in many chases, and I found him an
agreeable companion. On the rear end of each of the wagons in
Hagan’s train there was pasted a set of printed rules for the
government of the employees in the service of Majors, Russell &
Waddell. Both liquor and profanity were absolutely prohibited, but of
the strict enforcement of the rules I cannot speak.
While riding in advance of the train, in company with Captain
Chiles, we saw our Mexican friend, whose acquaintance we had
formed at Westport, the master of his own train, galloping toward us,
with a buffalo cow following close behind his horse. As was his habit,
he had attacked the animal with his spear, stabbing her until she
became infuriated so that she turned on him and was following him;
it occurred to me she was pressing him a little too closely to be
agreeable. We rode rapidly toward him, and as we were drawing
near the cow became so exhausted by loss of blood that she
stopped still, when Captain Chiles rode up and gave her a broadside
with his shotgun, which finished her.
Whenever they found buffalo in plenty the Mexicans would halt
for several days and kill enough to supply their trainmen. They
preserved the meat by cutting it into thin strips and hanging it on
ropes about the corral until it was dried by the sun. But thus cured, it
had a sour and disagreeable taste to me. The Mexicans would stew
it with quantities of red pepper and devour it with great relish.
As we approached the valley of the Little Arkansas, where the
view of the country was more extensive than any we had yet seen,
there was no limit to the herds of buffalo, the face of the earth being
covered with them. We camped at noon at the crossing of this
stream. The buffalo were crossing the creek above us, moving
westward, in bands of from twenty-five to a hundred or more. At the
crossing they had a trail cut down through the steep banks of the
stream three or four feet in depth.
But I had had enough of buffalo chasing, except when we were
in need of fresh meat. It was too much like riding out into the pasture
and killing your own domestic cattle. I found antelope hunting much
better sport.
After Walnut creek, the next place of interest was Pawnee Rock
near which many battles between the traders and the Indians had
taken place. This bluff, facing the road on the right hand side, at a
distance, perhaps, of a hundred yards, was of brown sandstone
about fifty feet high, the bluff end of the ridge extending down to the
river bottom. I climbed up the almost perpendicular face of the
elevation, where I found many names cut in the soft stone—names
of Santa Fé traders who had traveled the trail, among them that of
Colonel M. M. Marmaduke, who crossed to Mexico as early as 1826,
and was afterwards governor of Missouri, and James H. Lucas, a
prominent and wealthy citizen of St. Louis.
We were not particularly apprehensive of Indian troubles,
although we knew the Cheyennes were turbulent. Elijah Chiles, a
brother of our captain, had been loading goods at Kansas City when
we left—a train of twenty-six wagons for the Kiowas and Comanches
—and was doubtless a few days’ drive behind us. But we kept on the
lookout day and night; the guard around the cattle was doubled, and
each teamster had a gun of some sort, which he kept strapped to the
wagon bed, loaded and ready for service.
V.
Pestiferous Indians.
All the while we knew the Indians could wipe us out if they were
determined to do so. In both trains there were not above sixty men,
while there were, nearby, warriors by thousands.
A day’s journey beyond Pawnee Rock, we were visited by a
hunting party of fifteen or twenty young Kiowa bucks, the first real
“wild” Indians we had seen. They did not seem the least wild, however,
but uncomfortably “tame,” and disposed to get very familiar on short
acquaintance. They were evidently out on a lark, and disposed to
make us the objects of their amusement that afternoon.
They scattered up and down the length of both trains, talking and
laughing with the teamsters. Two of them took particular fancy to my
friend Reece, riding on either side of him, taking hold of his arms and
seeming to admire his long hair and the handsome horse he rode.
Reece was not at all afraid of them and permitted no undue
interference with his person or property.
Reece was no coward. While we were still in the dangerous region,
he would ride for miles ahead of the train, alone, dismount and lie
down to rest or sleep. When I said to him that he was incurring
unnecessary risk of being killed by the Indians, he remarked that if
they did kill him they could not rob him of much in this world.
Along where we were traveling at the time of the visit of the Kiowa
bucks, the river bottom was as smooth as a billiard table. Hagan’s train
was in the lead of ours a space of perhaps thirty yards intervening.
Hagan and I were riding abreast at the rear of his train, when suddenly,
two of the young bucks raised up a loud whoop and started their
horses at full speed. Taking a corner of their blankets in each hand and
holding them above their heads so that they made a flapping sound in
the air, they went sweeping along right against the cattle, almost
instantly creating a stampede, the cattle turning out of the highway
making the big wagons rattle as they went.
For an instant Hagan sat on his mule stock still, apparently
dumbfounded. In another moment he put spurs to his mule, intending
to head the fleeing cattle. But instead of running, the mule suddenly
“bucked,” throwing Hagan and his saddle also (the girth breaking) over
his head and landing him in the road, flat on his back. Hagan got up,
pulled himself together and rubbed the dust out of his eyes, but said
nothing, though gifted in the way of eloquent profanity.
No great harm resulted from the stampede. Some others of the
party of Indians ran ahead and stopped the cattle. There was no
collision of wagons and no damage, but the affair left an ugly feeling of
resentment among the teamsters toward the Indians. The Indians
laughed and talked about the affair among themselves. Any effort to
punish them was out of the question, the entire tribes of Kiowas and
Comanches being encamped within a day’s journey above us.
THE MULE SUDDENLY BUCKED.
The Indians kept along with the train all of the afternoon.
Observing my horse and accoutrements, they inquired through Juan,
the Spaniard, if he was fleet and good for buffalo, and pressed me to
go out with them for buffalo the next day. I would gladly have seen the
Indians engaged in a buffalo chase, but declined the invitation, making
such excuses as I could without expressing any want of confidence as
to their good fellowship. My scalp was intact and I felt disposed to keep
it so.
The Kiowas begged Captain Chiles and Hagan to give them some
flour and sugar, but they refused, knowing that a donation would be
necessary later on, when we should meet the entire tribes of Kiowas
and Comanches encamped above us, awaiting the arrival of their
agent and the train load of goods for them.
Late in the evening, after we had corralled and the cooks were
preparing to get supper these Indians having ridden off in the direction
of the river, two of them reappeared. They returned to the camp, each
with a bundle of dry driftwood, picked up on the river bank, which they
threw down near the camp fire. This meant that they wanted supper,
and Captain Chiles gave directions for the preparation of food for
them. The Indians took supper with us, after which they departed,
evidently feeling better and good naturedly disposed toward us.
That night there was much discussion of the Indian problem, with
which we seemed now confronted. At noon the next day, as the cattle
were being driven into the corral, another party of young warriors made
their appearance at our camp, and came near involving us in a serious
conflict. The trouble was brought on by the impatient action of our
assistant wagonmaster, Rice. Four or five young fellows rode up into
the rear entrance of our corral and were sitting there on their horses
looking on at the yoking of the cattle. They partially blocked up the
opening and interfered with egress of the teams. Rice, coming up
behind them, without warning gave one of their horses a blow with a
heavy blacksnake whip. The horse sprang forward, nearly unseating
the rider, who, as soon as he could gather up the reins of his bridle,
turned upon Rice in a towering rage, jerked an arrow from its quiver
and fixed it in his bow. Forcing his horse right upon Rice, the Indian
punched him with the point of the arrow until he knocked his hat off his
head. Rice made no effort to resist the affront and threatened assault,
but kept backing out of the Indian’s reach.
I was standing near by and seized my pistol, thinking that a fight
was imminent. At the height of the excitement, Captain Chiles made
his appearance and commanded peace, in manner and language that
the Indians could understand, but it required some time and a deal of
talk to get them quieted. They denounced Rice’s conduct as an insult
they were bound to resent, and declared they would kill Rice sooner or
later. Captain Chiles, speaking through Juan, our Spaniard, told them
that if they commenced killing they would have to kill us all, for we
were bound to stand together when it came to that. After a long
wrangle the Indian said he would be satisfied if allowed to give Rice a
sound flogging with a whip, but Captain Chiles refused. Finally the
Indians seemed to recover their composure, to some extent, and rode
off in the direction of the main camp.
* * * * *
Somewhere thereabout, in the river bottoms, I saw the ruins of an
old adobe fort. “Old Fort Atkinson,” doubtless named for and
established and built by the command of Colonel Henry Atkinson of the
regular army, with whose military career I happened to be somewhat
familiar. The remains of the old fort excited my interest, but I do not
recollect to have seen the place mentioned by any of the numerous
accounts that have been written of the Santa Fé trail.
PUNCHED HIM WITH THE POINT.
The fort was probably built in 1829. At that time a body of regular
troops was sent out on the trail as a protection to the traders. Colonel
Henry Atkinson was ordered west in 1818 and placed in command of
the Ninth Military department, then comprising the entire country west
of St. Louis, as well as Illinois and Wisconsin, with headquarters at
Fort Bellefontaine, near St. Louis. He was soon afterward advanced in
rank to brigadier general and held the command at Jefferson barracks
until his death in 1842. The military post at Council Bluffs, Ia., was
established by Colonel Atkinson in 1819, when he and his troops were
transported on the first steamboats ascending the Missouri river. He
served with distinction in the Black Hawk War, in command of the
forces.
VI.
At the Kiowa Camp.
The train had got under way the next morning when the lodges
of the Kiowas loomed up in sight of us. The camp seemed to extend
over territory a mile square. The Indians said the entire tribe was
assembled there—chiefs, warriors, squaws and papooses. Presently
we could see them moving towards us, hundreds of them, on
horseback and on foot, all sorts and sizes, men, women and
children, coming to take a view of the white man and his belongings
as they passed.
Soon we could see also the lodges of the Comanches,
appearing about equal in number, and covering a like extent of
country. The two camps were a mile or more apart.
It had been agreed between the wagonmasters that we would
not make the usual noonday halt that day, but would drive by the
Indian camps and as far beyond as it was possible for the cattle to
stand the travel. We had anticipated a great throng of Indians, and
here they came by the hundreds!
Some of the “big men” among them had guns or pistols, but the
greater number, in fact almost every one, had a bow and quiver of
arrows slung over his shoulders, even the children who looked not
over ten years old. One chief wore a complete outfit of blue, with the
insignia of a captain of the United States army, and had a Colt’s
revolver, but nearly all of them were naked to the waist, with a
breech-clout and a sort of kilt of buckskin around the loins, hanging
down nearly to the knees. Some wore moccasins, while many were
barefooted.
The little fellows, nude, save for a breech-clout, had little bows
about a foot long, with arrows of cactus thorn, with which they would
shoot grasshoppers and other insects, showing astonishing skill.
Numbers of the warriors carried spears, with long handles, glittering
in the sunlight as they rode along, giving the caravan the
appearance of a vast army of Crusaders on the march to the Holy
Land.
Captain Chiles, endeavoring to shift the responsibility and
escape the annoyance of the Indians, pointed to Reece, on his fine
horse, and said: “There is the captain; talk to him. Ask him for what
you want.” But they could not be so easily deceived. It is said that
you cannot fool Indians in this particular; that they never fail to
distinguish the wagonmaster, and appear to select the chief of any
crowd or caravan intuitively.
As we were traveling along the Indians gave frequent exhibitions
of the speed of their horses, running races with each other, but at a
sufficient distance not to frighten or stampede our cattle. The
younger men kept up a continual chattering and laughing; horse
racing seemed their great amusement. The young fellows of the visit
renewed their invitation, urging me to join them in a buffalo chase,
explaining that the herds were not far off, and expressing a great
desire to see a trial of my buffalo horse in a chase with theirs. I again
declined. The train was continually moving and would not be stopped
to suit my convenience, and there were other reasons, not
unreasonably discreet.
The head men of the tribes, addressing the wagonmasters,
complained that they were in great need of supplies, owing to the
delay in the arrival of their annuities, and asked a gift from the two
trains. The two wagonmasters, after some demurring, proposed to
them that if they, with all their people, would withdraw from, and
cease to follow the train, and desist from annoying us, after we had
corralled, we would go into camp and give them such supplies as we
could spare.
To this proposition the chiefs agreed. One of the leaders began
talking in a loud voice to the multitude, gradually riding off from us,
the crowd following. Reaching a knoll which elevated him so that he
could overlook them, he dismounted and proceeded to make a
speech. They seemed a little slow about leaving, the multitude
appearing to be not altogether governed by the leaders, but nearly
all finally withdrew in the direction of their own camp. Driving on a
few hundred yards further, our corrals were formed and the cattle
were driven off some distance for water, while preparations were
made for cooking dinner.
In a little while the chiefs, representing both tribes, made their
appearance at our corral, where the wagonmasters of both trains
had met to hold the diplomatic conference to determine how much of
a gift of supplies they were expecting from us.
The Indian chiefs dismounted from their horses, walked into the
corral and sat down on the ground, in the semi-circle, to the number
of perhaps a dozen and were soon joined by the wagonmasters,
together with our interpreter Juan.
Writing now, in the year 1901, solely from memory, forty-three
years since this scene occurred, I am unable to recollect all that was
said, or the names of any of the Indians who were present and took
part in this parley. No doubt San Tanta, that famous Kiowa chief, was
among them, but I took no notes whatever of this journey, and am
forced now to rely entirely on my memory. I recall that it was stated
that one of the most influential of the Comanche chiefs who was
there was an out-and-out Spaniard or Mexican, speaking the Indian
language as well as anybody, and was generally known and
recognized as among the meanest, most cruel and blood thirsty of
the Comanche tribe. One of the elder looking Indians produced a big
pipe, filled it with tobacco, lighted it, and after taking a few puffs
himself passed it to the one next to him. Thus the pipe was passed
around to each one in the circle until all had taken part in the smoke.
The Indians were dignified, discreet and cautious, as appeared to
me during the conference, leaving the impression that our troubles
with them were about to terminate, and this proved to be the fact.
At the close, and as a result of the council, a half-dozen sacks of
flour, half that many sacks of sugar, and a lot of sides of bacon were
brought forth from the mess wagons and stacked up on the ground,
near where the collection of dignitaries of the prairies were sitting,
smoking the pipe of peace and good fellowship.
I thought the Indians regarded the things we were giving them,
as a sort of tribute we were under obligations to pay for the privilege
of passing through their country unmolested.
Pack mules were brought up, the supplies were loaded on them
and they departed in the direction of the general camp, those
engaged in the conference soon following.
In the evening, before we broke camp, two young bucks came
galloping into the camp. Addressing Captain Chiles, they said that by
instruction of their chief they had come to return a pair of blankets
that had been stolen by one of the tribe. They threw down the
blankets and the captain called to the men at the mess wagon to
give them a cup of sugar each, saying that it was the first instance in
his life when an Indian had restored stolen property.
VII.
To the Cimarron.
Escaping any further delay from Indians or from other causes,

good headway was made by the trains up the Arkansas until we
reached the “lower crossing.” It had been determined by the
wagonmasters that we would cross the river here, taking the
Cimarron route. Although the river was fordable, yet it was quite
tedious and difficult to get the heavily loaded wagons across the
stream, the water being waist-deep and the bottom uneven.
Neither an ox nor a mule will pull when he gets into water
touching his body. The mule, under such circumstances, always has
a tendency to fall down, and so get drowned, by becoming entangled
in the harness. To meet this emergency the ox teams were doubled,
ten yoke being hitched to each wagon, and were urged to do their
duty by a half-dozen drivers on each side, wading through the water
beside them.
The greater part of one day was taken up in getting the wagons
across, but it was accomplished without serious loss. Everything
being over, we encamped at the foot of the hill on the opposite side,
and rested a day, in recognition of the Fourth of July. We fired some
shots, and Captain Chiles brought forth from his trunk some jars of
gooseberries, directing the cooks to make some pies, as an
additional recognition of the national holiday. The gooseberries were
all right, but the pie crust would have given an ostrich a case of
indigestion.
The old Santa Fé trail, from the lower crossing of the Arkansas,
ran southwest to the Cimarron, across a stretch of country where
there was no water for a distance of nearly sixty miles, if my memory
serves me correctly. All the water casks were filled from the
Arkansas river for the use of the men, but of course there was no
means of carrying water for horse or ox.
The weather was warm and dry, and now we were about to enter
upon the “hornada,” the Spanish word for “dry stretch.” Intending to
drive all night, starting was postponed until near sundown. Two or
three miles from the Arkansas we apparently reached the general
altitude of the plains over which we trudged during the whole night,
with nothing but the rumbling of the wagons and the occasional
shout of one of the drivers to break the silence of the plain.
DIFFICULT TO GET THE HEAVILY LOADED WAGONS ACROSS.
It was my first experience of traveling at night, on this journey.

Toward midnight I became so sleepy that I could hardly sit on my
horse, so dismounting, I walked and led him. Advancing to a point
near the head of the trains I ventured to lie down on the ground to
rest, as the trains were passing at least. Instantly my clothes were
perforated with cactus needles which pricked me severely, and
waking me thoroughly. In the darkness it was with great difficulty I
could get the needles out. Mounting my horse again I rode some
distance in advance of everybody, completely out of hearing of the
trains, and riding thus alone, with nothing visible but the stars, a
feeling of melancholy seized me, together with a sense of
homesickness, with which I had not hitherto been troubled. Each
day’s travel was increasing the distance between me, my home and
my mother, to whom I was most dearly attached; and here amid the
solitude, darkness and perfect quietude of the vast plains I began to
reflect upon the dangers besetting me, and the uncertainty of ever
returning to my home or seeing my relatives again.
The approach of morning and the rising of the sun soon
dispelled these forebodings of evil and revived my spirits. Old Sol,
like a ball of fire, emerged from the endless plain to the east of us, as
from the ocean, soon overwhelming us with a flood of light such as I
had never experienced before. During all that day’s march the heat
was intense and the sunlight almost blinding, the kind of weather that
creates the mirage of the plains. In the distance on either hand, fine
lakes of clear water were seen glistening in the sun, sometimes
appearing circular in shape, surrounded with the proper shores, the
illusion being apparently complete, so much so that several times
during the day I rode some distance seeking to ascertain if they were
really lakes or not. I found them receding as I approached, and was
unable to get any closer to them than when as a boy I set out to find
the sack of gold at the end of the rainbow.
About midday we passed a great pile of bleached bones of
mules that had been thrown up in a conical shaped heap by the
passing trainmen, in the course of the ten years they had been lying
there. They were the remains of 200 or 300 mules belonging to John
S. Jones, a Missourian, a citizen of Pettis county, whom I knew
personally. In 1847, and for many years afterward, Jones was
engaged in freighting across the plains. In ’47, having obtained a
contract from the government to transport freight for the troops at
Santa Fé, he got a start late in the season, and had only reached the
crossing of the Arkansas when he was overtaken by such deep
snow and severely cold weather as to compel him to stop and go
into quasi-winter quarters. While there, protected by such barracks
for man and beast as could be hastily constructed, he received
orders from the commander of the troops in New Mexico that he
must hurry up with the supplies, orders of such urgency that they
could not be disregarded. He had a mule train of thirty wagons.
Orders were given to hitch up and start. The weather moderated the
first day, but on the second they encountered a heavy and cold rain
freezing as it fell, and were forced to go into corral. Intense cold
followed and every one of the mules froze to death, huddling in the
corral, during the night. Years afterwards, through the influence of
Colonel Benton in the Senate and John G. Miller of Missouri in the
House of Representatives an appropriation was made by Congress
of $40,000 to pay Mr. Jones for the loss of his mules.
In the forenoon of the second day from the Arkansas we reached
Sand creek, a tributary of the Cimarron, where we found a pool of
stagnant water, not enough for the oxen, but sufficient for the
trainmen to make coffee with, and there we camped. A few hours
afterwards we struck the valley of the Cimarron, and, after riding up
the bed of the apparently dry stream, we discovered a pool of clear
water. The cattle were so famished that they ran into it, hitched to the
wagons, their drivers being unable to restrain them, and it was with
considerable difficulty that the wagons were afterwards pulled out of
the mud.
VIII.
My First Antelope.
After reaching the Cimarron we began seeing herds of antelope

in the distance. At first I tried “flagging” them. I had been told that on
approaching within two or three hundred yards of them, concealed
from their view behind an intervening ridge, these animals were
possessed of such inordinate curiosity that they could be enticed to
within gunshot of the hunter by tying a handkerchief on the end of a
stick and elevating it in sight of the antelope, the hunter, of course,
keeping concealed. I made several efforts at this plan of exciting
their curiosity, and while some of them came toward me at first sight
of the flag, their curiosity seemed counterbalanced by caution or
incredulity, and in no instance could I get one to come near enough
for a sure or safe shot. I then tried a rifle, with which I was also
unsuccessful, not then being able to make a correct estimate of the
distance between me and the antelope, a troublesome task, only to
be acquired by experience and constant practice.

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Diplomatic Investigations: Essays On

The Theory Of International Politics

Original Description of the Book

This volume of essays breaks new ground in the study of international

¹ Theoretical Aspects of International Relations, ed. W. T. R. Fox (University of Notre Dame

the diplomatic historian, the student of international relations, and the

explore the corpus of diplomatic and military experience in order to refor-

11. Threats of Force in International Relations 223

Hedley Bull Reader in International Relations in the University of London

Herbert Butterﬁeld Master of Peterhouse and Regius Professor of Modern History in

Additional Contributors to the New Edition

Tim Dunne Professor of International Relations and Pro-Vice-Chancellor at The

Ian Hall Professor of International Relations at Grifﬁth University

Introduction to the New Edition

focus of its own academic discipline, or at least a recognized sub-discipline

     3

they saw as the pragmatic tendencies of signiﬁcant elements of American

¹² Butterﬁeld and Wight, 'Preface', p. 4. William T. R. Fox (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of

     5

The Making of the Book

Diplomatic Investigations is a compilation of essays written for the British

Notoriously, others whom Butterﬁeld might have invited, given their

     7

discussion, ‘international society’.²⁵ This implied analyses of the traditions of

     9

on science and international relations were dropped prior to the submission

     11

theory of international relations that might guide diplomatic practice in the

     13

(Robert James) Martin Wight (1913–72) read history at Hertford College,

     15

interpretation of the Grotian tradition and a number of other inﬂuences,

The essays included in Diplomatic Investigations vary more in style than is

⁵⁹ ibid., p. 42. ⁶⁰ ibid., p. 53.

     17

world state.⁶⁴ Instead, to make sense of international society and to locate

and perhaps has had, an inﬂuence positively detrimental to international

⁷¹ Bull, ‘Grotian Conception’, p. 91.

     19

Wight’s chapter on ‘The Balance of Power’ is a more complex effort.⁸⁴ Its

     21

Appraisals and Inﬂuence

⁹⁰ Michael Howard, ‘War as an Instrument of Policy’, this volume, pp. 218–9.

The most appreciative review came from Hans J. Morgenthau, an admirer

Morgenthau was excited too by Diplomatic Investigations, proclaiming the

Other US-based readers of Diplomatic Investigations were less enthusiastic.

⁹³ Hans J. Morgenthau, ‘The Intellectual and Political Functions of a Theory of International

     23

in his contribution to that important stock-take, The Aberystwyth Papers:

     25

Diplomatic Investigations and the English School

The Rise of International Theory

     27

Critics challenged the apparent pessimism of this idea that contemporary

     29

The Return to History

essays, in particular, became the focus of a growing number of scholars

     31

are ‘ideologies of international order’, accounts of legitimacy, or understand-

The Rise of Normative Theory

Perhaps the most important legacy of Diplomatic Investigations, however, is

Before reaching Pawnee Rock we overtook a train of thirty

Escaping any further delay from Indians or from other causes,