History, theory, and international order: some lessons from the nineteenth century ROBERT LATHAM International Relations scholars have drawn on history ever since the field first formed in the early twentieth century.They have trawled the beds of the past, far and near, to probe, substantiate, and analogize in the pursuit of theories about what have been taken to be the main pillars of contemporary international life: states and the institutions and systems that form around their interaction. Even if states as we now know them did not exist in a given period, one could still mine insights from the interaction of any relatively autonomous political units, from city-states to tribal bands. 1 It is therefore to be expected that when students of international relations want to describe a given historical epoch, it is usually in terms of the international system formed or the order produced by the interaction of states. For all the inroads into the field of the world-systems and critical theory approaches, the second half of the twentieth century is typically depicted as the Cold War period, not the period of the postwar consolidation of capitalism or of the emergence of a new form of (post)- modernity. In International Relations, epochs are made by states, either wittingly in purposefully designed orderings of relations or unwittingly through the systemic structures (from unipolar to multipolar) that emerge out of patterns of state inter- action moulded by disparities in resources and capabilities. 2 The challenges to this vision of history have stood out, if anything, as exceptions. 3 This way of thinking about history has been consistent with many of the field’s leading schools and approaches, whether or not their practitioners have explicitly tackled the issue of what determines the broad character of a historical epoch. Structural realists can compare and contrast historical system types; regime analysts can identify the norms and institutions that shape a period’s international relations; hegemonic stability theorists can find instances of the rise and fall of great powers; Review of International Studies (1997), 23, 419–443 Copyright © British International Studies Association 419 1 See, e.g., Marcus Fischer, ‘Feudal Europe, 800–1300: Communal Discourse and Conflictual Practices’, International Organization, 46 (1992), pp. 427–66; and Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London, 1992). 2 On system structures see Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA, 1979). The concept of purposeful order is explored in Thomas J. Biersteker, ‘The ‘‘Triumph’’ of Neoclassical Economics in the Developing World: Policy Convergence and Bases of Governance in the International Economic Order’, in J. Rosenau and E. Czempiel (eds.), Governance without Government (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 102–31. 3 See, e.g., the essays in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and its Critics (New York, 1986); and Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (eds.), Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s (Lexington, MA, 1989). The attempt to take account of these challenges within the framework of international systems theory is ably explored by Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy (New York, 1993).