travelingTwentieth Century Benchmark Dates in
International Relations: The Three World Wars in Historical Perspective*
Barry Buzan and George Lawson** Abstract: This paper builds on the author’s earlier work on benchmark dates in International Relations. The Introduction summaris this work and explains how this paper extends the analysis from suggestions made, but not developed, in earlier publications. The cond ction looks in detail at 20th century benchmark dates centred on the three world wars (First, Second and Cold). It argues that the changes clustered around the Second World War are both deeper and more extensive than tho clustered around either the First World War or the Cold War. The third ction us the insights to open-up a macro-historical perspective on the 20th century, demonstrating the ways in which choices in relation to both time and scale affect the construction of macro-historical perspectives. The fourth ction demonstrates the advantages of a two-century perspective on the 20th century. Here, and in the conclusion, we argue that the key issues that underpinned world politics in the 20th century are best en as the downstream conquences of the dynamics and challenges ushered in by the 19th century “global transformation.”手表的英文单词
Keywords: benchmark dates, the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War
* F or the conference on global curity and global governance issues since World War Two, organized by International Security Studies, University of International Relations, 3-5 July 2015.
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** B arryBuzan(****************.uk),EmeritusProfessorintheDepartmentofInternationalRelationsatLSE,aSenior Rearch Associate at LSE IDEAS, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was formerly Montague Burton Professor in the IRDepartmentatLSE.GeorgeLawson(***************.uk),AssociateProfessorinInternationalRelationsatLSEandCo-Editor of the Review of International Studies.
40Barry Buzan and George Lawson
1. Introduction
sheenThis paper builds on earlier work by Buzan and Lawson about how to understand benchmark dates in International Relations (IR). 1 That work argued that benchmark dates are most fruitfully en as tipping points within macro-historical process rather than as point-in-time events. In other words, benchmark dates are symbolic reprentations marking clusters of significant changes that may stretch over long periods. In this perspective, the benchmark date of 1648 is less about the particular
s of the Peace of Westphalia than being the tipping point for a wider t of process, namely the emergence of the sovereign, territorial state, which took place in Europe during the period between the later 15th century and the early part of the 18th century. Our earlier work argued that IR’s conventional benchmark dates (1500, 1648, 1919, 1945 and 1989) were: (a) Eurocentric; (b) overly concerned with major wars and their ttlements; and (c) insufficiently attuned to large-scale changes beyond war such as major technological advances, ruptures in ideational schemas and revolutions. This bias towards European wars and their ttlements has led IR to mostly ignore the “global transformation” that occurred between 1776 and 1914.2 As a result, IR has adopted a faulty historical antenna that, in turn, precludes effective analysis of some of its most important issue-areas, from capitalist expansion to debates around sovereignty. To rectify this flaw, we adopted veral criteria for identifying significant macro-historical change from across a range of IR theories. This generated nine criteria that rved as candidates for benchmark status:
1. the organizing principle (aka “structure”) of the international system (from neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism);
2. the social organizing principles (aka “the primary institutions of international society”– from the English School);
3. the “interaction capacity”3 of the international system (defined as the capacity to move goods, people and ideas around the system – from structural realism);
santa claus4. the scale of the international system in terms of regular interaction (from realism and systems theory);
5. the scale of the international society in terms of its social structure (from the English School and constructivism);
6. the occurrence of systemic cris such as major wars, revolutions and economic breakdowns (from realism, historical sociology and IPE);
7. changes in the dominant unit of the international system/society (from realism and the English School);
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heva8. changes in the distribution of power (aka “polarity”– from realism);
1 B arry Buzan and George Lawson, “Rethinking Benchmark Dates in International Relations,”European Journal of
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International Relations, V ol. 20, No. 2 (June 2014), pp. 437-462; 〔英〕巴里·布赞、[英]乔治·劳森:《重新思考国际关系中的基准时间》 (颜震译)，载《史学集刊》, 2014年第1期，第3-19页。
服装设计师助理2 B arry Buzan and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
3 B arry Buzan, Charles Jones and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy, New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.青岛考研辅导
