Abstract
A significant body of scholarly literature habitually presents the writings of Edmund Burke as constituting a contribution to international relations theory. This perspective derives in large part from an examination of Burke’s later writings, especially those concerned with the outbreak of the French Revolution and the pattern of its subsequent development.1 Some of this literature claims Burke as the inaugural representative of a specific “English school” of international thought.2 This idea is not completely without foundation because Burke did indeed champion the cause of the British constitution as an exemplary model of political engineering, favorably contrasting it with the organization of France. But this fact is hardly sufficient to qualify him as a British theorist of international relations—or as the creator of any kind of “school” for that matter. Burke was above all else a publicist and a politician, although it is clear that he was preoccupied with international affairs, particularly as these unfolded after 1789.
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Notes
The pioneering monograph in this field is Jennifer M. Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).
R. J. Vincent, “Edmund Burke and the Theory of International Relations”, Review of International Studies, 10:2 (1984), 205–218
David Boucher, “The Character of the History of the Philosophy of International Relations and the Case of Edmund Burke”, Review of International Studies, 17:2 (April 1991), 127–148
Jennifer M. Welsh, “Edmund Burke and the Commonwealth of Europe: The Cultural Bases of International Order” in Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann eds., Classical Theories of International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996)
David P. Fidler and Jennifer M. Welsh eds., Empire and Community: Edmund Burke’s Writings and Speeches on International Relations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999).
See Martin Wight, “Why is there no International Theory?” in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966)
R. J. Vincent, “Edmund Burke and the Theory of International Relations”, Review of International Studies, 10:2 (1984), 205–218
Timothy Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998).
For Burke’s debt to common law forms of argument, see J. G. A. Pocock, “Burke and the Ancient Constitution: A Problem in the History of Ideas”, in Pollock, Politics, language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press 1971).
David Armitage, “Edmund Burke and Reason of State”, Journal of the History of Ideas 61:4 (October 2000), 617–34.
This is centrally addressed in Iain Hampsher-Monk, “Edmund Burke’s Changing Justification for Intervention”, The Historical Journal, 48:1 (2005), 65–100.
Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810), ed. Etienne Hofmann, trans. Dennis O’Keefe (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003) 356.
John Dunn, “Liberty as a Substantive Political Value” in Interpreting Modern Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1989 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
On the problem of political “mistranslation” in the sense intended here, see Sudipta Kaviraj, “Marxism in Translation: Critical Reflections on Indian Radical Thought” in Richard Bourke and Raymond Geuss, eds. Political Judgement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Bernard Williams, “Saint-Just’s Illusion” in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers, 1982–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
For Burke’s reprobation of Valletort’s imprudence on this score, see F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke Volume II: 1784–1797 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 255.
Substance of the Speech of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the Debate on the Army Estimates, in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, the 9th Day of February, 1790, third edition reprinted in Edmund Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. Ian Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 308.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 134–135.
Edmund Burke, Thoughts on French Affairs (1791) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume VIII: The French Revolution 1790–1794, ed. L. G. Mitchell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 341.
For a discussion of Burke’s views on revolutionary democracy, see Richard Bourke, “Enlightenment, Revolution and Democracy”, Constellations, 15:1 (March 2008), 10–32.
Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae, ed. C.D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), I
Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation (1769) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke II: Party, Parliament and the American Crisis, 1766–1774, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 151.
Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 25–26.
Edmund Burke, “Speech on Address” (8 November 1768) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume II: Party, Parliament and the American Crisis, 1766–1774, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) p. 98.
H. M. Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 115–22.
Ibid., p. 113. On Rockinghamite foreign policy in response to the Treaty of Paris, see Paul Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, 1765–1766 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 83–02.
For ministerial thinking at the time, see Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
For the contents of the first and second propagandist decrees of November 19 and December 15, 1792, see Archives parlementaires de 1787 á 1860: Recueil complet des débats législatif et politiques des chambers françaises, première série (Paris 1787–1799), vol. 53, pp. 479–81 and vol. 55, p. 76. (Paris: 1879–1913), 12 vols., 53, 4724. For discussion, see M. Bouloiseau, “L’Organisation de l’Europe selon Brissot et les Girondins, à la fin de 1792”, Annales historiques de la révolution française, 57 (1985), 290–294.
T. C. W Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London and New York: Longman, 1986), 73–80
T. C. W Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 ((London: Arnold, 1996), 71–105.
On the “prudent views of modern politics” as best suited to the maintenance of the European balance of power, see David Hume, “Of the Balance of Power” (1754) in Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 339.
On the general theme, see Richard Bourke, “Sovereignty, Opinion and Revolution in Edmund Burke”, History of European Ideas, 25:3 (1999), 99–120.
Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, 488–491. For his earliest remarks on the “old common law of Europe,” see Reflections, 32; for a development of the thesis, see Edmund Burke, First Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume IX: The Revolutionary War (1794–1797) and Ireland, ed. R. B. McDowell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 248.
Alexis de Tocquevüle, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Volume One: The Complete Text, eds. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 101.
Raymond Aron, “L’avenir des religions séculières” (1944), Commentaire, 8:28–29 (1985), 369–383.
Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West (London: Victor Gollanz, 1938)
R. G. Collingwood, “Fascism and Nazism” (1940) in David Boucher, ed., Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols, (London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945, 1966).
Here I depart from the seminal argument set out in J. G. A. Pocock, “Edmund Burke and the Redefinition of Enthusiasm: The Context as Counter-Revolution” in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, eds., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: The Transformation of Political Culture 1789–1848 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989).
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Bourke, R. (2009). Edmund Burke and International Conflict. In: Hall, I., Hill, L. (eds) British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier. Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230101739_6
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