Warriors, pacifists and empires: race and racism in international thought before 1914

Before 1914 scholars of international thought frequently relied on racist arguments, yet the ways that race was used varied widely from author to author. This article charts the way that race was used by two groups of Anglophone writers. The warriors used biological arguments to construct views of international affairs that relied on racist analysis. Pacifists might have used racist language that relied more on cultural prejudices, and would often base their more progressive views of international affairs on the idea of a civilizing mission. Using A. T. Mahan and Brooks Adams as exemplars of the warrior approach, and Norman Angell and H. N. Brailsford for the pacifists, I argue that race and racism play an important part in international thought before the First World War. This racism was directed at the colonized in the global South, Indigenous peoples in settler colonial states, and Jews in the global North. This use of race and racism in pre-First World War international thought has implications for how we view the development of International Relations today. It is not just statues and stately homes that require a thorough reassessment of attitudes to race, but also our understanding of the progression of ideas in international thought.

An Anatomy of International Thought

International relations encompass three aspects: international anarchy, with sovereign states recognizing no political superior; routine interactions in diplomatic, legal, and commercial institutions; and moral solidarity, with cultural and psychological links more profound than those of politics and economics. Thinkers who underscore international anarchy regard the idea of international society as fictional. Hobbes, for example, maintains that the only remedy for anarchical competition is to make a contract for a ruler or an assembly to take power and act to ensure security. Grotius and other thinkers who emphasize the extensive informal, legal, and customary interactions in international affairs highlight humanity’s sociability and its potential for constitutionalism and the rule of law. Kant and others anticipate the vindication of humanity’s potential for peace through the deepening of the material and moral interdependence of people around the world. This may come about through uniformity of independent states in standards of virtue and legitimacy or through the political and moral unification of humanity.

A “Priesthood of Knowledge”: The International Thought of Henri de Saint-Simon

The French political theorist Henri de Saint-Simon is largely absent from historical International Relations (IR). This article shows why this is unwarranted and introduces him as an international thinker who made lasting contributions to IR's modern conceptual imagination. Largely responding to the French Revolution Saint-Simon rethought the parameters of international order, imagining the international as a realm separable from national politics and conformable to human agency. International order, on his account, could be actively created. This could take the shape of legislation, trade, or large-scale engineering projects: of new methods of governance. Based on a close reading of texts rarely brought into IR’s focus, this article introduces Saint-Simon as a thinker who cut across traditional IR divides and developed a central actor category of international order: impartial, knowledge-based agents of change. His understanding of international reform not only made it possible to theorize and experiment with a role in global governance for technical experts but also masked the imperial underpinnings of the international projects these experts facilitated. The article makes the case that Saint-Simon deserves a firm place in historical IR, that his thought presents an opportunity for revisiting widely held assumptions about international authority, and that a discernible Saint-Simonian strand of international thought puts typically liberal histories of global governance in question.