Martin Wight on Historical Narrative: Power Politics and the Review of F. H. Hinsley Power and the Pursuit of Peace
Japan Association of Global Governance, Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan, May, 2024.
CHIHIRO KARIYA, PhD 
Abstract
Martin Wight, a leading figure of the English School, was both a historian and a theorist. While his International Theory (1991) has been widely studied, his historical scholarship remains underexplored. One reason is that debates between the English School and American IR scholarship have tended to frame Wight in terms of history versus theory rather than examining the distinctive features of his historiography. This paper explores Wight’s historical narrative through Power Politics (1978), comparing it with C. A. W. Hinsley’s Power and the Pursuit of Peace (1963). In his review of Hinsley’s book, Wight criticizes its Kantian optimism and instead urges readers to remember how the nineteenth-century international order collapsed. The paper also considers Masataka Kosaka’s review of Hinsley.