Historical International Relations (HIST)

Research Project

What is the source of our current predicament? Or, to put it more bluntly – how did we end up here? This has been one of the foundational questions of International Relations scholarship since the first steps towards a discipline were taken more than a century ago. During the first decades of disciplinary development, no particular justification for turning to history was needed. For a discipline which grew partly out of History, more or less explicitly theoretically informed historical narrative was the predominant form of scholarship.

The turn to behavioural analysis around 1960 challenged this state of affairs, and even though explicit historical analysis never disappeared, it clearly lost its pride of place. Likewise, even if scholars across the discipline were clearly studying history (albeit often relatively recent history), there was little explicit reflection about how and why one should engage history.

Over the last two decades, International Relations has undergone what has been referred to as an “historical turn”, with an increasing number of scholars self-consciously describing their work as historical, and engaging in ever more sophisticated theoretical and empirical historical analyses.

The HIST project at NUPI seeks to align itself with this trajectory, gauging the historical dimensions of current trends and predicaments, and theorizing international politics through historical analyses. It also gathers ongoing research on historical international relations at NUPI. This consists both of long-term personal projects and shorter-term collaborative projects.

  • Iver B. Neumann is currently finalizing a book manuscript of the steppe with Einar Wigen;
  • Morten Skumsrud Andersen is involved in a historical account of the balance of power;
  • Halvard Leira and Benjamin de Carvalho are dealing with privateering and violence at sea in historical perspectiv;
  • Halvard Leira is also working on a book manuscript of the emergence of the field of foreign policy,while
  • Benjamin de Carvalho is working on a book manuscript on the impact of the reformations on the transformation of sovereignty and nation-states.

Publications

Publication : ANTOLOGI

International Diplomacy vol I-IV

2013
Following on from where 2004's widely acclaimed three-volume SAGE collection, Diplomacy (ed. Jonsson & Langhorne) left off, this new four-volume ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Omverdenen som utfordring – imperieoppløsning og folkestyrets begrensning

2014
(Available in Norwegian only): Hvordan skal man som ny stat forholde seg til omverdenen? Dette var et av de spørsmålene som kom opp til tidlig og heftig ...
Publication

The formative years: Norway as an obsessive status-seeker

2015
This chapter shows how status concerns were central to how Norway related to the wider world during the formative nineteenth century: status and identity ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

International Relations Pluralism and History—Embracing Amateurism to Strengthen the Profession

2014
This article approaches the possibility of achieving pluralist International Relations research through engagements with history/History. There are serious ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

'Our entire people are natural born friends of peace': the Norwegian foreign policy of peace

2013
What makes a peace nation? In this article it is argued that the Norwegian foreign policy of peace is rooted in an historical self‐understanding of Norway ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Dyrisk diplomati

2013
Publication

Consular Diplomacy

2012
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Kaperne kommer!

2011
(Available in Norwegian only): I en kommentar i Aftenposten i februar sammenlignet Inger Anne Olsen dagens sjørøveri utenfor Somalia med kapervirksomhet ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL
Publication
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Semi-cores in imperial relations: The cases of Scotland and Norway

2015
Recently, the field of International Relations has seen increased interest in international hierarchy, and also an upswing in the analytical study of ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Hva var Norge i det danske imperiet? Skottland og Norge som semi-sentra

2014
Denne artikkelen handler om Skottlands og Norges roller som politiske enheter i henholdsvis det britiske og danske imperiet. I artikkelens første del ...
Publication : OVERSIKTSART

Legitimacy in State-Building: A Review of the IR Literature

2012
In this article, which focuses on different concepts of state-building and legitimacy as used in the mainstream International Relations (IR) literature, ...
Publication : ARTIKKEL

Practices as Models: A Methodology with an Illustration Concerning Wampum Diplomacy

2012
The everyday meaning of ‘practice’ is something like concrete ‘doings’ or ‘what is being done’ in a social setting. Its everyday counter-concept is theory. ...