The Practice of International History in the Twenty-First Century

当今英国社会面临的国际挑战凸显了理解世界政治的本质和动态的重要性。国际历史学家必须在促进这种理解方面发挥作用。21世纪的国际历史实践将创建一个由历史学家、国际关系专家和外交和联邦事务部官员组成的国际研究网络。核心目标是建立一个跨学科论坛，集体反思国际历史的性质和实践及其对更广泛的英国社会的贡献。该研究网络将包括来自英国、欧洲大陆、北美和澳大利亚的顶尖学者。它将由成熟的研究人员、博士生、博士后和早期职业学者组成。这将为英国的国际历史学家提供一个框架，使他们能够对我们这个领域当前和未来状况的更广泛的辩论做出重要贡献。在过去的二十年中，出现了对国际历史的哲学和方法论基础的根本性挑战。“文化转向”的倡导者认为，应该更多地关注种族、性别、宗教和集体记忆，以此加深我们对国际政治的理解。“跨国”历史的出现提出了一种不同的挑战，它拒绝把民族国家作为分析的焦点，把注意力集中在人员、思想和技术的流动上，这些流动在很多方面都是武断的国家边界。这种“跨国转向”补充了对“以欧洲为中心”的历史方法的转向，这是新“全球史”的核心特征。国际关系理论家之间关于思想、制度和物质力量的相对重要性的争论有可能进一步丰富国际历史学家的工作。我们领域实践的最后一个挑战是需要与英国政策界，特别是外交和联邦事务部（FCO）进行更富有成效和系统的接触。北美和欧洲的国际历史学家最近一直在积极探讨上述问题对国际历史实践的影响。英国的学者远没有那么活跃。该项目将为纠正这种沉默提供一个框架，同时为从学校到研究生大学课程的各级政策团体以及国际历史教师的持续参与创造结构。已经确定了一些核心问题，为四个为期一天的讲习班提供了一个概念框架。来自英国、欧洲、北美和澳大利亚的历史学家和国际关系专家以及英国外交部官员将参加这些研讨会。该项目的主要“产出”将是一个“领域现状”文集、一个国际关系史教学和研究的互动式网络资源，以及一个与政策利益攸关方接触的持久结构。实现这些目标将使当代和未来几代国际历史学家能够更好地进行教学、研究，并更有效地为应对我们这个时代不断变化的国际挑战作出贡献。

The international challenges facing British society today underline the crucial importance of understanding the nature and dynamics of world politics. International historians must play a role in furthering this understanding. The Practice of International History in the Twenty-First Century will create an international research network comprised of historians, international relations specialists and officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The core objective is to establish an inter-disciplinary forum for collective reflection on the nature and practice of international history and its role in contributing to wider British society. The research network will include leading scholars from the UK, the European continent, North America and Australia. It will be made up of established researchers, PhD students, post-docs and early career scholars. This will provide a framework to allow UK-based international historians to make an important contribution to wider debates on the current and future state of our field.The past two decades have seen the emergence of fundamental challenges to the philosophical and methodological underpinnings of international history. Advocates of a 'cultural turn' have argued for greater attention to race, gender, religion and collective memory as a means of deepening our understanding of international politics. The emergence of 'transnational' history has presented a different kind of challenge that rejects the nation-state as the focus of analysis to concentrate on the flow of people, ideas and technologies across what are in many ways arbitrary national frontiers. This 'transnational turn' complements a turn away from 'Eurocentric' historical approaches that is a central feature of the new 'global history'. Debates among international relations [IR] theorists over the relative importance of ideas, institutions and material power have the potential to further enrich the work of international historians. A final challenge to practices in our field is the need to engage more fruitfully and systematically with the UK policy community in general, and with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO] in particular. International historians in North America and Europe have recently been active in addressing the implications of the issues raised above for the practice of international history. Scholars in the UK have been far less active. This project will provide a framework for redressing this silence while at the same time creating structures for ongoing engagement with the policy community as well as teachers of international history at all levels from schools to postgraduate university courses. A number of core questions have been identified to provide a conceptual framework for four one-day workshops. Historians and IR specialists from the UK, Europe, North America and Australia and FCO officials will participate in these workshops. The chief 'outputs' produced by the project will be a 'state of the field' collection of essays, an inter-active web-based resource for teaching and research in the history of international relations and durable structures for engagement with policy stakeholders. Achieving these aims will leave the present and future generations of international historians better-equipped to teach, research and to contribute more effectively to meeting the ever-changing international challenges of our time.