Description
The study of foreign policy has often remained siloed, interested in formation, debate, and implementation, but not the intellectual history or context from which policy originates. Such a reality has begun to break, however, in-part due to a resurgence of interest in applied history. Various applied historical traditions exist today, at times influenced by other disciplines (particularly International Relations), and occasionally armed with manifestos. Too often, however, these traditions themselves have become siloed, either via country, institution, or methodology, leading to confusion and incoherence when considered in the context of foreign policy.
Recent scholarship has sought to examine a ‘speculative philosophy of history’ that argues that the way in which scholars collect, arrange, analyse, and interpret historical facts helps determine some of the key intellectual pillars of their international thought. Grounded in first principles, this ‘applied historicism’ possibly offers a stronger foundation upon which one’s understanding of the application of historical thinking to decision-making vis-à-vis foreign affairs can be built.
The paper will thus apply this approach to British socialists and social democrats, specifically those in and around the British Labour Party in the early twentieth century – a group whose philosophy of history is often reduced to the teleology of Karl Marx’s historical materialism. The British case study is also of particular value given that, notably in the case of the social democrats, their socialism was subordinated to their sense of patriotism and British national identity, which differs from their Marxist colleagues in Europe. The identification of a coherent, ‘progressive’ philosophy of history amongst this cadre potentially offers a more substantial foundation upon which contemporary conceptions of international order and grand strategy could be better understood.
