A “Great Power” Man or World Stater? The International Thought of Charles Kingsley Webster, 1886–1961

Abstract

This article examines the international thought of Charles Kingsley Webster, one of Britain's most important diplomatic historians of the twentieth century. Though best remembered as one of the first historians of the Congress of Vienna and a biographer of Lord Castlereagh and Lord Palmerston, Webster also served as one of the key planners for the United Nations Organization in the Foreign Office during the Second World War. His ideas concerning internationalism—particularly his belief in an eventual world state—as well as his views on British foreign policy and the nature of international politics, offer a unique insight into both the varieties of interwar internationalism and the intellectualism which contributed to British strategic planning in the early 1940s.