Diplomatic history
Encyclopedia
Diplomatic history deals with the history of international relations
between states. Diplomatic history can be different from international relations in that the former can concern itself with the foreign policy of one state while the latter deals with relations between two or more states. Diplomatic history tends to be more concerned with the history of diplomacy whereas international relations deals more with current events and creating a model intended to shed explanatory light on international politics. It contrasts with political history
dealing with politics inside the nation state.
is the history of the various political entities created by the Human race throughout their existence on Earth and the way these states define their borders. The history of political thinking
goes back to antiquity. Political history, and thus the history of political thinking throughout human existence stretches though up to Medieval period and the Renaissance. In the Age of Enlightenment, political entities expanded from basic systems of self-governance and monarchy to the complex democratic and communist systems that exist of the Industrialized and the Modern Era, in parallel, political systems have expanded from vaguely defined frontier-type boundaries, to the definite boundaries existing today.
Although much of existing written history might be classified as diplomatic history - Thucydides
, certainly, is among other things, highly concerned with the relations among states - the modern form of diplomatic history was codified in the 19th century by Leopold von Ranke
, a the leading German historian of the 19th century. Ranke wrote largely on the history of Early Modern Europe
, using the diplomatic archives of the European powers (particularly the Venetians
) to construct a detailed understanding of the history of Europe wie es eigentlich gewesen ("as it actually happened."). Ranke saw diplomatic history as the most important kind of history to write because of his idea of the "Primacy of Foreign Affairs" (Primat der Aussenpolitik), arguing that the concerns of international relations drive the internal development of the state. Ranke's understanding of diplomatic history relied on the large number of official documents produced by modern western governments as sources, which he argued should be examined in an objective and neutral spirit.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, work by prominent diplomatic historians such as Charles Webster, Harold Temperley, Alfred Pribram, R.H. Lord and B.E. Schmitt were mostly concerned with the events such as the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna and the origins of the Franco-German War. A notable event in diplomatic history occurred in 1910 when the French government start to publish all of the archives relating to the war of 1870.
Ranke's understanding of the dominance of foreign policy, and hence an emphasis on diplomatic history, remained the dominant paradigm in historical writing through the first half of the twentieth century. This emphasis, combined with the effects of the War Guilt Clause in the Treaty of Versailles
(1919) which ended the First World War, led to a huge amount of historical writing on the subject of the origins of the war in 1914, with the involved governments printing huge, carefully edited, collections of documents and numerous historians writing multi-volume histories of the origins of the war. In the interwar period, most diplomatic historians tended to blame of the all the Great Powers of 1914 for the First World War, arguing that the war was in effect everybody's responsibility. In general, the early works in this vein, including Fritz Fischer
's controversial (at the time) 1961 thesis that German goals of "world power" were the principal cause of the war, fit fairly comfortably into Ranke's emphasis on Aussenpolitik.
For the first half of the 20th century, most diplomatic history working within the narrow confines of the Primat der Aussenpolitik approach was very narrowly concerned with foreign-policy making elites with little reference to broader historical forces. The most notable exceptions to this tendency were A. J. P. Taylor
and William Medlicott in Britain, Pierre Renouvin
in France, and William L. Langer
in the United States. A sign of the future tendencies in diplomatic history occurred in 1939 with the publication of the British historian E. H. Carr's book The Twenty Years' Crisis
which suggested that it was a flawed peace settlement in 1919 instead of the decisions of individual leaders that caused the problems of interwar Europe. Through The Twenty Years' Crisis was published just months before World War II began, the Japanese historian Saho Matusumoto wrote that in a sense, Carr's book began the debate on the origins of World War II.
By contrast, Sir Winston Churchill
's 1948 book The Gathering Storm presented World War II as caused by the insane ambitions of Adolf Hitler
who was unwillingly abetted by cowardly and weak-willed British and French leaders who chose appeasement
over resistance. In the 1950s, almost all diplomatic history on the origins of World War II followed Churchill's lead in unsparingly condemning British and French leaders for appeasement in the 1930s. A group of French historians centered around Pierre Renouvin and his protégés Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Maurice Baumont started a new type of international history in the 1950s that included taking into account what Renouvin called (profound forces) such as the influence of domestic politics on French foreign policy. However, Renouvin and his followers still followed the concept of with Renouvin arguing that French society under the Third Republic was “sorely lacking in initiative and dynamism” and Baumont arguing that French politicians had allowed "personal interests" to override "any sense of the general interest". In 1979, Duroselle published a well-known book entitled that offered a total condemnation of the entire Third Republic as weak, cowardly and degenerate.
The British historian A. J. P. Taylor
's 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War claimed that Hitler had no master-plan for conquering the world and was instead an opportunistic leader seizing whatever chances he had for expansionism, and that the war that started over Poland in 1939 was due to diplomatic miscalculation on the part of the Germans, the British, the French and the Poles instead of being a case of German aggression. Taylor's book set off a huge storm in the 1960s that led to much reappraisal of the origins of World War II. British historians such as D.C. Watt, George Peden and David Dilks followed Taylor and argued that far being a case of a degenerate clique who had mysteriously seized control of British foreign policy in the 1930s, that appeasement was due to a number of structural economic and military factors that had limited British options. Reflecting the new interests, British historians such as Christopher Thorne
and Harry Hinsley
abandoned the previous focus on individual leaders to discuss the broader societal influnces such as public opinion and narrower ones like intelligence on diplomatic relations.
At the same time, in 1961 when the German historian Fritz Fischer
published Griff nach der Weltmacht, which established that Germany had caused the First World War led to the fierce "Fischer Controversy" that tore apart the West German historical profession. One result of Fischer's book was the rise in the Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) approach. As a result of the rise of the Primat der Innenpolitik school, diplomatic historians increasing started to play attention to domestic politics. In the 1970s, the conservative German historian Andreas Hillgruber
, together with his close associate Klaus Hildebrand
, was involved in a very acrimonious debate with the leftish German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler
over the merits of the Primat der Aussenpolitik ("primacy of foreign politics") and Primat der Innenpolitik ("primacy of domestic politics") schools. Hillgruber and Hildebrand made a case for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik approach to diplomatic history with the stress on examining the records of the relevant foreign ministry and studies of the foreign policy decision-making elite. Wehler, who favored the Primat der Innenpolitik approach, for his part contended that diplomatic history should be treated as a sub-branch of social history
, calling for theoretically-based research, and argued that the real focus should be on the study of the society in question. Moreover, under the influence of the Primat der Innenpolitik approach, diplomatic historians in the 1960s, 70s and 80s start to borrow models from the social sciences.
A notable example of the Primat der Innenpolitik approach was the claim by the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason
who claimed that the launch of World War II in 1939 was best understood as a “barbaric variant of social imperialism”. Mason argued that “Nazi Germany was always bent at some time upon a major war of expansion”. However, Mason argued that the timing of a such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted. In Mason's view in the period between 1936–41, it was the state of the German economy, and not Hitler's "will" or "intentions" that was the most important determinate on German decision-making on foreign policy. Mason argued that the Nazi leaders were deeply haunted by the November Revolution of 1918, and was most unwilling to see any fall in working class living standards out of the fear that it might provoke another November Revolution. According to Mason, by 1939, the “overheating” of the German economy caused by rearmament, the failure of various rearmament plans produced by the shortages of skilled workers, industrial unrest caused by the breakdown of German social policies, and the sharp drop in living standards for the German working class forced Hitler into going to war at a time and place not of his choosing. Mason contended that when faced with the deep socio-economic crisis the Nazi leadership had decided to embark upon a ruthless “smash and grab” foreign policy of seizing territory in Eastern Europe which could be pitilessly plundered to support living standards in Germany. Mason's theory of a "Flight into war" being imposed on Hitler generated much controversy, and in the 1980s he conducted a series of debates with economic historian Richard Overy
over this matter. Overy maintained the decision to attack Poland
was not caused by structural economic problems, but rather was the result of Hitler wanting a localized war at that particular time in history. For Overy, a major problem with the Mason thesis was that it rested on the assumption that in a way unrecorded by the records, that information was passed on to Hitler about the Reichs economic problems. Overy argued that there was a major difference between economic pressures inducted by the problems of the Four Year Plan
, and economic motives to seize raw materials, industry and foreign reserve of neighboring states as a way of accelerating the Four Year Plan. Moreover, Overy asserted that the repressive capacity of the German state as a way of dealing with domestic unhappiness was somewhat downplayed by Mason.
In addition, because World War II was a global war, diplomatic historians start to focus on Japanese-American relations to understand why Japan had attacked the United States in 1941. This in turn led diplomatic historians to start to abandon the previous Euro-centric approach in favor of a more global approach. A sign of the changing times was the rise to prominence of such diplomatic historians such as the Japanese historian Chihiro Hosoya, the British historian Ian Nish
, and the Japanese historian Akira Iriye
, which was the first time that Asian specialists became noted diplomatic historians. The Cold War
and decolonization greatly added the tendency to a more global diplomatic history. The Vietnam War
led to the rise of a revisionist school in the United States, which led many American historians such as Gabriel Kolko
and William Appleman Williams
to reject traditional diplomatic history in favor of a Primat der Innenpolitik approach that saw a widespread examination of the influence of American domestic politics together with various social, economic and cultural forces on foreign-policy making. In general, the American Cold War revisionists tended to focus on American foreign policy decision-making with respect to the genesis of the Cold War in the 1940s and on how the United States became involved in Vietnam in the 1960s. Starting in the 1960s, a ferocious debate has taken place within Cold War histriography between the advocates of the “orthodox” school which saw the Cold War as a case of Soviet aggression such as Vojtech Mastny
against the proponents of the “revisionist” school which saw the Cold War as a case of American aggression. Latterly, a third school known as "neo-orthodox" whose most prominent member is the American historian John Lewis Gaddis
has emerged, which holds through the United States borne some responsibity for the Cold War, the lion's share of the responsibility goes to the Soviet Union.
In the U.S. since 1980, the discipline of diplomatic history has become more relevant to and integrated with the mainstream of the historiographic profession, having been in the forefront of the internationalization of American historical studies. As a field that explores the meeting of domestic and international forces, the study of US foreign relations has become increasingly important for its examination of both the study of culture and identity and the exploration of political ideologies. Particularly shaped by the influence of studies of Orientalism and globalism, gender studies, race, and considerations of national identity, diplomatic history was often at the cutting edge of historical research. Despite such innovations, however, the core endeavor of diplomatic history remains the study of the state, which is also a key to its broadening appeal, since considerations of US state power are essential to understanding the world internationally.
Citations
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
between states. Diplomatic history can be different from international relations in that the former can concern itself with the foreign policy of one state while the latter deals with relations between two or more states. Diplomatic history tends to be more concerned with the history of diplomacy whereas international relations deals more with current events and creating a model intended to shed explanatory light on international politics. It contrasts with political history
Political history
Political history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Diplomatic history, social history, economic history, and military history, as well as constitutional history and public...
dealing with politics inside the nation state.
Political world history
The political history of the worldPolitical history of the world
The political history of the world is the history of the various political entities created by the human race throughout their existence and the way these states define their borders...
is the history of the various political entities created by the Human race throughout their existence on Earth and the way these states define their borders. The history of political thinking
History of political thinking
The history of political thought goes back to antiquity. The political history of the world, and thus the history of political thinking by man, stretches up though the Medieval period and the Renaissance...
goes back to antiquity. Political history, and thus the history of political thinking throughout human existence stretches though up to Medieval period and the Renaissance. In the Age of Enlightenment, political entities expanded from basic systems of self-governance and monarchy to the complex democratic and communist systems that exist of the Industrialized and the Modern Era, in parallel, political systems have expanded from vaguely defined frontier-type boundaries, to the definite boundaries existing today.
Although much of existing written history might be classified as diplomatic history - Thucydides
Thucydides
Thucydides was a Greek historian and author from Alimos. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC...
, certainly, is among other things, highly concerned with the relations among states - the modern form of diplomatic history was codified in the 19th century by Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke
Leopold von Ranke was a German historian, considered one of the founders of modern source-based history. Ranke set the standards for much of later historical writing, introducing such ideas as reliance on primary sources , an emphasis on narrative history and especially international politics .-...
, a the leading German historian of the 19th century. Ranke wrote largely on the history of Early Modern Europe
Early modern Europe
Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Europe which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...
, using the diplomatic archives of the European powers (particularly the Venetians
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
) to construct a detailed understanding of the history of Europe wie es eigentlich gewesen ("as it actually happened."). Ranke saw diplomatic history as the most important kind of history to write because of his idea of the "Primacy of Foreign Affairs" (Primat der Aussenpolitik), arguing that the concerns of international relations drive the internal development of the state. Ranke's understanding of diplomatic history relied on the large number of official documents produced by modern western governments as sources, which he argued should be examined in an objective and neutral spirit.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, work by prominent diplomatic historians such as Charles Webster, Harold Temperley, Alfred Pribram, R.H. Lord and B.E. Schmitt were mostly concerned with the events such as the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna and the origins of the Franco-German War. A notable event in diplomatic history occurred in 1910 when the French government start to publish all of the archives relating to the war of 1870.
Ranke's understanding of the dominance of foreign policy, and hence an emphasis on diplomatic history, remained the dominant paradigm in historical writing through the first half of the twentieth century. This emphasis, combined with the effects of the War Guilt Clause in the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
(1919) which ended the First World War, led to a huge amount of historical writing on the subject of the origins of the war in 1914, with the involved governments printing huge, carefully edited, collections of documents and numerous historians writing multi-volume histories of the origins of the war. In the interwar period, most diplomatic historians tended to blame of the all the Great Powers of 1914 for the First World War, arguing that the war was in effect everybody's responsibility. In general, the early works in this vein, including Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.-Biography:Fischer was born in Ludwigsstadt in Bavaria. His...
's controversial (at the time) 1961 thesis that German goals of "world power" were the principal cause of the war, fit fairly comfortably into Ranke's emphasis on Aussenpolitik.
For the first half of the 20th century, most diplomatic history working within the narrow confines of the Primat der Aussenpolitik approach was very narrowly concerned with foreign-policy making elites with little reference to broader historical forces. The most notable exceptions to this tendency were A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
and William Medlicott in Britain, Pierre Renouvin
Pierre Renouvin
Pierre Renouvin was a French diplomatic historian. Renouvin was born in Paris and attended the Lycée-Louis-le-Grand, where he was rewarded his aggrégation in 1912. Renouvin spent the years 1912-1914 travelling in Germany and Russia...
in France, and William L. Langer
William L. Langer
William Leonard Langer was the chair of the history department at Harvard University and the World War II volunteer head of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services...
in the United States. A sign of the future tendencies in diplomatic history occurred in 1939 with the publication of the British historian E. H. Carr's book The Twenty Years' Crisis
The Twenty Years' Crisis
The Twenty Years' Crisis': 1919-1939 is a book on international relations written by Edward Hallett Carr . The book was written in the 1930s shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe and the first edition was published in September 1939, shortly after the war' s outbreak. Carr...
which suggested that it was a flawed peace settlement in 1919 instead of the decisions of individual leaders that caused the problems of interwar Europe. Through The Twenty Years' Crisis was published just months before World War II began, the Japanese historian Saho Matusumoto wrote that in a sense, Carr's book began the debate on the origins of World War II.
By contrast, Sir Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
's 1948 book The Gathering Storm presented World War II as caused by the insane ambitions of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
who was unwillingly abetted by cowardly and weak-willed British and French leaders who chose appeasement
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
over resistance. In the 1950s, almost all diplomatic history on the origins of World War II followed Churchill's lead in unsparingly condemning British and French leaders for appeasement in the 1930s. A group of French historians centered around Pierre Renouvin and his protégés Jean-Baptiste Duroselle and Maurice Baumont started a new type of international history in the 1950s that included taking into account what Renouvin called (profound forces) such as the influence of domestic politics on French foreign policy. However, Renouvin and his followers still followed the concept of with Renouvin arguing that French society under the Third Republic was “sorely lacking in initiative and dynamism” and Baumont arguing that French politicians had allowed "personal interests" to override "any sense of the general interest". In 1979, Duroselle published a well-known book entitled that offered a total condemnation of the entire Third Republic as weak, cowardly and degenerate.
The British historian A. J. P. Taylor
A. J. P. Taylor
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:...
's 1961 book The Origins of the Second World War claimed that Hitler had no master-plan for conquering the world and was instead an opportunistic leader seizing whatever chances he had for expansionism, and that the war that started over Poland in 1939 was due to diplomatic miscalculation on the part of the Germans, the British, the French and the Poles instead of being a case of German aggression. Taylor's book set off a huge storm in the 1960s that led to much reappraisal of the origins of World War II. British historians such as D.C. Watt, George Peden and David Dilks followed Taylor and argued that far being a case of a degenerate clique who had mysteriously seized control of British foreign policy in the 1930s, that appeasement was due to a number of structural economic and military factors that had limited British options. Reflecting the new interests, British historians such as Christopher Thorne
Christopher Thorne
Christopher G. Thorne was a British historian, who specialised in studying the Pacific War.-Biography:* The Approach of War, 1938-1939...
and Harry Hinsley
Harry Hinsley
Sir Francis Harry Hinsley OBE was an English historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Intelligence during the Second World War...
abandoned the previous focus on individual leaders to discuss the broader societal influnces such as public opinion and narrower ones like intelligence on diplomatic relations.
At the same time, in 1961 when the German historian Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer
Fritz Fischer was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.-Biography:Fischer was born in Ludwigsstadt in Bavaria. His...
published Griff nach der Weltmacht, which established that Germany had caused the First World War led to the fierce "Fischer Controversy" that tore apart the West German historical profession. One result of Fischer's book was the rise in the Primat der Innenpolitik (Primacy of Domestic Politics) approach. As a result of the rise of the Primat der Innenpolitik school, diplomatic historians increasing started to play attention to domestic politics. In the 1970s, the conservative German historian Andreas Hillgruber
Andreas Hillgruber
Andreas Fritz Hillgruber was a conservative German historian. Hillgruber was influential as a military and diplomatic historian.At his death in 1989, the American historian Francis L...
, together with his close associate Klaus Hildebrand
Klaus Hildebrand
Klaus Hildebrand is a German conservative historian whose area of expertise is 19th-20th century German political and military history.- Biography :...
, was involved in a very acrimonious debate with the leftish German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler
Hans-Ulrich Wehler
Hans-Ulrich Wehler is a German historian known for his role in promoting social history through the "Bielefeld School", and for his critical studies of 19th century Germany.-Career:...
over the merits of the Primat der Aussenpolitik ("primacy of foreign politics") and Primat der Innenpolitik ("primacy of domestic politics") schools. Hillgruber and Hildebrand made a case for the traditional Primat der Aussenpolitik approach to diplomatic history with the stress on examining the records of the relevant foreign ministry and studies of the foreign policy decision-making elite. Wehler, who favored the Primat der Innenpolitik approach, for his part contended that diplomatic history should be treated as a sub-branch of social history
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a branch of History that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments...
, calling for theoretically-based research, and argued that the real focus should be on the study of the society in question. Moreover, under the influence of the Primat der Innenpolitik approach, diplomatic historians in the 1960s, 70s and 80s start to borrow models from the social sciences.
A notable example of the Primat der Innenpolitik approach was the claim by the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason
Timothy Mason
Timothy Wright Mason was a British Marxist historian of Nazi Germany.-Life and work:He was born in Birkenhead, the child of school-teachers and was educated at Birkenhead School and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford from 1971–1984 and was twice married. He helped to found the...
who claimed that the launch of World War II in 1939 was best understood as a “barbaric variant of social imperialism”. Mason argued that “Nazi Germany was always bent at some time upon a major war of expansion”. However, Mason argued that the timing of a such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted. In Mason's view in the period between 1936–41, it was the state of the German economy, and not Hitler's "will" or "intentions" that was the most important determinate on German decision-making on foreign policy. Mason argued that the Nazi leaders were deeply haunted by the November Revolution of 1918, and was most unwilling to see any fall in working class living standards out of the fear that it might provoke another November Revolution. According to Mason, by 1939, the “overheating” of the German economy caused by rearmament, the failure of various rearmament plans produced by the shortages of skilled workers, industrial unrest caused by the breakdown of German social policies, and the sharp drop in living standards for the German working class forced Hitler into going to war at a time and place not of his choosing. Mason contended that when faced with the deep socio-economic crisis the Nazi leadership had decided to embark upon a ruthless “smash and grab” foreign policy of seizing territory in Eastern Europe which could be pitilessly plundered to support living standards in Germany. Mason's theory of a "Flight into war" being imposed on Hitler generated much controversy, and in the 1980s he conducted a series of debates with economic historian Richard Overy
Richard Overy
Richard Overy is a British historian who has published extensively on the history of World War II and the Third Reich. In 2007 as The Times editor of Complete History of the World he chose the 50 key dates of world history....
over this matter. Overy maintained the decision to attack Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
was not caused by structural economic problems, but rather was the result of Hitler wanting a localized war at that particular time in history. For Overy, a major problem with the Mason thesis was that it rested on the assumption that in a way unrecorded by the records, that information was passed on to Hitler about the Reichs economic problems. Overy argued that there was a major difference between economic pressures inducted by the problems of the Four Year Plan
Four year plan
The Four Year Plan was a series of economic reforms created by the Nazi Party. The main aim of the four year plan was to prepare Germany for war in four years...
, and economic motives to seize raw materials, industry and foreign reserve of neighboring states as a way of accelerating the Four Year Plan. Moreover, Overy asserted that the repressive capacity of the German state as a way of dealing with domestic unhappiness was somewhat downplayed by Mason.
In addition, because World War II was a global war, diplomatic historians start to focus on Japanese-American relations to understand why Japan had attacked the United States in 1941. This in turn led diplomatic historians to start to abandon the previous Euro-centric approach in favor of a more global approach. A sign of the changing times was the rise to prominence of such diplomatic historians such as the Japanese historian Chihiro Hosoya, the British historian Ian Nish
Ian Nish
Ian Hill Nish CBE is a British academic, a specialist in Japanese studies, and Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science ....
, and the Japanese historian Akira Iriye
Akira Iriye
is an historian of American diplomatic history especially United States-East Asian relations, and international issues. He is the only Japanese citizen ever to serve as President of the American Historical Association, and has also served as president for the Society for Historians of American...
, which was the first time that Asian specialists became noted diplomatic historians. The Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and decolonization greatly added the tendency to a more global diplomatic history. The Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
led to the rise of a revisionist school in the United States, which led many American historians such as Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko is an American historian and author.Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University and the University of Wisconsin , married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania...
and William Appleman Williams
William Appleman Williams
William Appleman Williams was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist historians of American diplomacy, and has been called "the favorite historian of the Middle American New Left." He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the...
to reject traditional diplomatic history in favor of a Primat der Innenpolitik approach that saw a widespread examination of the influence of American domestic politics together with various social, economic and cultural forces on foreign-policy making. In general, the American Cold War revisionists tended to focus on American foreign policy decision-making with respect to the genesis of the Cold War in the 1940s and on how the United States became involved in Vietnam in the 1960s. Starting in the 1960s, a ferocious debate has taken place within Cold War histriography between the advocates of the “orthodox” school which saw the Cold War as a case of Soviet aggression such as Vojtech Mastny
Vojtech Mastny
Vojtech Mastny is an American historian of Czech descent, professor of political science and international relations, specializing in the history of the Cold War. He has been considered one of the leading American authorities on Soviet affairs. Mastny received his Ph.D...
against the proponents of the “revisionist” school which saw the Cold War as a case of American aggression. Latterly, a third school known as "neo-orthodox" whose most prominent member is the American historian John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis
John Lewis Gaddis is a noted historian of the Cold War and grand strategy, who has been hailed as the "Dean of Cold War Historians" by The New York Times. He is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. He is also the official biographer of the seminal 20th...
has emerged, which holds through the United States borne some responsibity for the Cold War, the lion's share of the responsibility goes to the Soviet Union.
Historical studies
In Europe, diplomatic history fell out of favor in the late Cold War era. Since the collapse of communism, there has been a renaissance, led especially by historians of the early modern era, in the history of diplomacy. The new approach differs from previous perspectives by the wholesale incorporation of perspectives from political science, sociology, the history of mentalities, and cultural history.In the U.S. since 1980, the discipline of diplomatic history has become more relevant to and integrated with the mainstream of the historiographic profession, having been in the forefront of the internationalization of American historical studies. As a field that explores the meeting of domestic and international forces, the study of US foreign relations has become increasingly important for its examination of both the study of culture and identity and the exploration of political ideologies. Particularly shaped by the influence of studies of Orientalism and globalism, gender studies, race, and considerations of national identity, diplomatic history was often at the cutting edge of historical research. Despite such innovations, however, the core endeavor of diplomatic history remains the study of the state, which is also a key to its broadening appeal, since considerations of US state power are essential to understanding the world internationally.
see also
- DiplomacyDiplomacyDiplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
- Diplomatic history of AustraliaDiplomatic history of AustraliaThe diplomatic history of Australia covers the events of Australian foreign relations.-Shift in focus from United Kingdom to United States:...
- Historians
- History of U.S. foreign policyHistory of U.S. foreign policyHistory of U.S. foreign policy is a brief overview of major trends regarding the foreign policy of the United States from the American Revolution to the present...
- Military HistoryMilitary historyMilitary history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships....
- Office of the HistorianOffice of The HistorianThe Office of the Historian is an office of the United States Department of State within the Bureau of Public Affairs. The Office is responsible, under law, for the preparation and publication of the official historical documentary record of U.S. foreign policy in the Foreign Relations of the...
of the U.S. Department of State - Political historyPolitical historyPolitical history is the narrative and analysis of political events, ideas, movements, and leaders. It is distinct from, but related to, other fields of history such as Diplomatic history, social history, economic history, and military history, as well as constitutional history and public...
- Society for Historians of American Foreign RelationsSociety for Historians of American Foreign RelationsThe Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations is the leading learned society for the academic study of the history of United States foreign policy....
- Timeline of United States diplomatic historyTimeline of United States diplomatic historyThe diplomatic history of the United States oscillated among three positions: isolation from diplomatic entanglements of other nations ; alliances with European and other military partners; and unilateralism, or operating on its own sovereign policy decisions...
Further reading
- Hogan, Michael J. and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, (2004), articles originally appeared in ‘’Diplomatic History’’ and cover all main fields of American diplomatic history
- Koshiro, Yukiko. "Japan's World and World War II," Diplomatic History, Summer 2001, Vol. 25 Issue 3, pp 425-41
- Xia, Yafeng. "New Scholarship And Directions in the Study of the Diplomatic History of the People'S Republic of China," Chinese Historical Review, Spring 2007, Vol. 14 Issue 1, pp 114-140
- Zeiler, Thomas W. “The Diplomatic History Bandwagon: A State of the Field,” Journal of American History (March 2009), v 95#4 pp 1053-73, online at History CooperativeHistory CooperativeHistory Cooperative is an online database of scholarly history articles from leading journals. It provides online access to library users to recent articles from 20 major journals and other online sources. It was originally created by the University of Illinois Press, and is also sponsored by...
- Zeiler, Thomas W. ed. American Foreign Relations since 1600: A Guide to the Literature (2007), online
Reference
General information- Matusumoto, Saho "Diplomatic History/International Relations" pages 314-316 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing ed. Kelly Boyd, Volume 1, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999, ISBN 1-884964-33-8
Citations