As a quarry for data, testing-ground for theory and site of investigation, history has been one of the unacknowledged partners of International Relations. The last two decades has witnessed both a substantial increase in the scope of historical IR scholarship and in the sophistication of methodological approaches to history, accompanied by a rapidly increasing (and multidisciplinary) interest in the history of international thought, as well as an ever more sophisticated historiography of the discipline itself.

This Major Work is structured in a way to engage with the key recent developments in the field of international relations, providing the reader with an overview of approaches to history in IR; the history of international thought/historiography; and the emergence of the state and the state system.

Volume One: Doing Historical International Relations

Volume Two: The History of International Thought

Volume Three: The State in Historical Perspective

Volume Four: The State System in Historical Perspective

VOLUME ONE: DOING HISTORICAL INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Part One: Classic Takes
Why Is There No International Theory? - Martin Wight
International Relations: The Long Road to Theory - Stanley Hoffmann
International Relations and the Relevance of History - Arthur Gilbert
Part Two: Reconceptualizations
History and Structure in the Theory of International Relations - Rob Walker
Diplomatic History and International Relations Theory: Respecting Difference and Crossing Boundaries - Colin Elman and Miriam Elman
The Pragmatics of International History - Donald Puchala
The Historical Problem in International Relations - Thomas Smith
Still 'Marking Time'? Text, Discourse and Truth in International History - Patrick Finney
Part Three: Ways of Doing Historical International Relations
On the Historical Imagination of International Relations: The Case for a 'Deweyan Reconstruction' - Jonathan Isacoff
What's at Stake in 'Bringing Historical Sociology Back' into International Relations? Transcending 'Chronofetishism' and 'Tempocentrism' in International Relations - John Hobson
International Relations and the 'Problem of History' - Nick Vaughan-Williams
History, Action and Identity: Revisiting the 'Second' Great Debate and Assessing Its Importance for Social Theory - Friedrich Kratochwil
Narrative Explanation and International Relations: Back to Basics - Hidemi Suganami
What Is History in International Relations? - John Hobson and George Lawson
What's at Stake in the Historical Turn? Theory, Practice and Phronesis in International Relations - David McCourt
VOLUME TWO: THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL THOUGHT
Part One: Rethinking International Thought
The International Turn in Intellectual History - David Armitage
Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides - David Welch
Justus Lipsius, Political Humanism and the Disciplining of 17th Century Statecraft - Halvard Leira
The Forgotten Prophet: Tom Paine's Cosmopolitanism and International Relations - Thomas Walker
Justice, Order and Anarchy: The International Political Theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) - Alex Pritchard
Part Two: International Relations before the Discipline
Birth of a Discipline - Robert Vitalis
Origins and Originality: IR Scholarship before World War I - Torbjørn Knutsen
Feminism, War and the Prospects for Peace - Lucian Ashworth
Part Three: Reconceptualizing Disciplinary History
The Myth of the 'First Great Debate' - Peter Wilson
Lessons from the Past: Reassessing the Interwar Disciplinary History of International Relations - Brian Schmidt
Who Killed the International Studies Conference? - David Long
The Construction of an Edifice: The Story of a First Great Debate - Joel Quirk and Darshan Vigneswaran
The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory - Nicolas Guilhot
Writing the World: Disciplinary History and Beyond - Duncan Bell
The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths That Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919 - Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira and John Hobson
VOLUME THREE: THE STATE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Part One: Classic Takes
State Formation and State Building in Europe - Thomas Ertman
Reflections on the History of European State-Making - Charles Tilly
The Absolutist State in the West - Perry Anderson
The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results - Michael Mann
The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State - John Herz
Part Two: Reconceptualizations
Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics - Stephen Krasner
Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State: A Reassessment - Wolfgang Reinhard
Culture in Rational-Choice Theories of State Formation - Julia Adams
Body and Soul: Calvinism, Discipline, and State Power in Early Modern Europe Modern Europe - Philip Gorski
Part Three: Beyond the European Experience
The Latin American Puzzle and Wars and Nation States in Latin America - Miguel Angel Centeno
War and the State in Africa - Jeffrey Herbst
Part Four: Reflections
On the Ontological Status of the State - Erik Ringmar
The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory - John Agnew
Sovereignty as Symbolic Form - Jens Bartelson`
Polities Past and Present - Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach
VOLUME FOUR: THE STATE SYSTEM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Part One: Nature and Emergence
Systems of States - Adam Watson
The Concept of Order in World Politics - Hedley Bull
Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth - Andreas Osiander
Of Systems, Boundaries and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System - Friedrich Kratochwil
Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations - John Ruggie
Agraria and Industria: Two Models of the International System - George Modelski
Part Two: Facets of the International System
Institutional Selection in International Relations: State Anarchy as Order - Hendrik Spruyt
Testing Balance-of-Power Theory in World History - William Wohlforth et al.
Gendering Sovereignty: Marriage and International Relations in Elizabethan Times - Diana Saco
The Altered State and the State of Nature-The French Revolution and International Politics - Mlada Bukovansky
Japan's Socialization into Janus-Faced European International Society - Shogo Suzuki
Part Three: The Problem of Empires
From International Law to Imperial Constitutions: The Problem of Quasi-Sovereignty, 1870-1900 - Lauren Benton
What¿s at Stake in the American Empire Debate - Daniel Nexon and Thomas Wright
Part Four: Rethinking Change
Rethinking Benchmark Dates in International Relations - Barry Buzan and George Lawson