International Society as a Historical Subject

Abstract

For some time now, historians have been venturing well beyond the spatial and methodological enclosures of nation-states that had long defined the modern discipline, writing more history that is variously described as international, transnational, transregional, global, or world history.1 This essay sets out to examine one aspect of the turn away from methodological nationalism—which is the assumption that the nation-state is the natural frame for the study of history—an aspect that has often been described as the emergence of a “new international history.”2 The term “international history” has had a rather complicated history in the U.S. historical profession, where it has been rather uncommon and, when used, has carried meanings that have often been broad and imprecise.3 More common in usage have been terms that seemed to carry meanings that were better specified: diplomatic history, the history of foreign relations, or occasionally, the history of international relations.4 But while the genealogy of the “new international history” is rooted in these historiographical traditions, it has gone beyond them in some important ways. The essay begins by tracing this genealogy and surveying the longstanding debates over crisis and renewal in the field of diplomatic/international history, and then traces the various strands of the new international history as it has emerged in the past twenty years or so. In its second part, it outlines a proposal for redefining and refocusing the field of international history as the history of “international society,” with that term understood to describe not simply an arena for where state actors interact but rather a historical subject in its own right, one that comprises actors and institutions of numerous types, both state and non-state, and invites scholarship that employs a diverse array of methodological approaches. The essay concludes with a discussion of the advantages, possible pitfalls, and methodological challenges that are involved in writing the history of international society. It draws its examples primarily from the literature on the history of the United States in the world, but the conceptual frame it lays out should prove useful, too, to scholars of international history that is centered elsewhere, or nowhere in particular.