The Australian School of International Relations [Hardcover]

This book offers the first comprehensive account of the emergence of the IR discipline in Australia. Initially influenced by British ideas, the first generation of Australian international relations practitioners demonstrated in their work a strong awareness of the unique local conditions to which their theorizing should respond.1. The Institutional Setting 2. W. Harrison Moore: Imperialism and Internationalism 3. Frederic Eggleston: The Empire and the Pacific 4. A. C. V. Melbourne: The Limits of Early Australian School Nationalism 5. H. Duncan Hall: Theorizing the Commonwealth 6. W. K. Hancock: The Commonwealth and World Government 7. Fred Alexander: The Duty of Public Education 8. W. Macmahon Ball: A Focus on Asia 9. Walter Crocker: The Afro-Asian Challenge to the International System 10. An Australian School of International Relations

James Cotton has written a path-breaking work on the long ignored but highly significant 'Australian School' of international relations as it evolved during Australia's formative years. The book contests even destroys misperceptions previously embraced about Australia's allegedly 'exclusive' realist-rationalist approach to the IR field. It illuminates, for the first time, those historical, geographic, and cultural factors that shaped the unique richness and diversity of Australia's IR discipline. Bill Tow, Professor, Australian National University

The history of the discipline of IR has been the subject of several new histories in the last two decades. James Cotton's book adds a valuable new chapter to this story. He does so by engaging with the work of eight neglected scholars who, individually and collectively, further complicate the simplistic 'realism vs. idealism' framing that dominated the field during the early post-World War II era. In ending his story in around 1960, he has left an opening for other disciplinary historians to examine Australian contributions to the later 'great debates.' A compalS6