What’s historical about historical IR? narrativity, the philosophy of history and world order studies

Abstract

Historical International Relations (HIR) represents a growing subfield within the wider discipline, offering a ‘history-first’ approach, lessening the grip of more theory and/or methods-driven scholarship. But this raises questions over the underlying philosophy guiding HIR scholarship. Such questions have been raised before by philosophers of history and historical sociologists, including in relation to the concept of narrative as a means of explanation that unites historians and social scientists alike. Placing this literature into closer dialogue with three recent works on the historical study of world orders, this paper advances a conceptual language rooted in three logics of narrative. First, narrative analyticism, in which HIR scholars reflect the narrative emplotments identified by historians and historical sociologists. Second, narrative embeddedness, where narrative structures are embedded in source materials. Third, strategic narrative deployment, where historically competent actors engage in acts of narrative construction. These logics offer greater clarity on the different historical claims HIR scholars are making, helping refine methodological choices and allowing the identification of further research areas. The paper concludes with suggestions on how a narrative-centred conception of HIR might reinvigorate the study of arguably the most important twentieth-century shift in world order: decolonization.