POLI 247C Fall 2009

History of International Relations Tue, 9:00a – 11:50a

http://polisci.ucsd.edu/slantchev/courses/ps247c/ SSB 104

Professor Branislav L. Slantchev

Office: SSB 287
Office Hours: by appointment
E-mail: slantchev@ucsd.edu

DESCRIPTION: This course provides advanced graduate students with a survey of in-
ternational relations history with a focus on European diplomatic history from 1618
through 1945. We shall look at the historical development of organizations that employ
violence, the evolution of doctrines for the use of force, the technological changes and
attendant revolutions in military affairs. Our focus will be on the diplomatic interac-
tions and the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which they take place.
We shall emphasize certain formative conflicts: The Thirty Years’ War, the Wars of
Louis XIV, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Wars of German Unifi-
cation, and the two world wars of the 20th century.

PREREQUISITES: I will assume that you have taken at least the field seminar in Inter-
national Relations. Ideally, you would have taken the 247A and 247B courses that are
part of the IR Sequence and that introduce you to formal and empirical studies of IR.
This course is intended to complement the other two by giving the historical grounding
necessary for intelligent research in IR.

REQUIREMENTS: There are three major requirements for this course, with the percen-
tage of the course grade that each constitutes shown in parentheses:

1. Class Participation (35%). You are expected to come to class prepared, and ready
to discuss the readings. You must focus on the following themes:
a. Causes: immediate and fundamental, attempt to apply IR theory;
b. Military technology: the most important weapons, the tactics for their use,
and the dominant strategies employed in warfare;
c. Military organization: the composition of the fighting forces, the financing
of wars, the style of leadership and command, the logistics and supply;
d. Political organization: institutions, decision-making bodies;
e. Contexts: alliances, societal characteristics, culture, and relevant events.

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 f. Consequences: war outcome, territorial, social, and political changes, new
alignments, changes of international organizations or institutions

You should treat this component very seriously because you may well be asked to lead a
discussion in class. The most useful way to prepare for this would be to keep notes on the
themes (with references to the readings). This would permit direct comparisons among
periods. For specific conflicts, you may wish to prepare a “dictionary” with names and
political positions of major actors, information about crucial battles, content of peace or
alliance treaties, and perhaps even notes about especially important technology.

2. A List of Causes of War (15%). You will prepare a list of causes of wars, which
will be due to me by noon on Friday, December 11. This list will evolve as we ac-
cumulate knowledge of the various periods. For each cause, you will indicate its
temporal or contextual scope (e.g., perhaps it depends on social organization or
military technology), give examples where it seems to apply, and note whether
IR theory has anything to say about it. I expect that this list will expand as the
course progresses but if you decide to discard some potential cause, you should
keep it on the list with a note why it should be discarded, modified, or sup-
planted. You may wish to organize this list thematically (systemic factors,
attributes of military technology/culture, human nature, attributes of politi-
cal/social units, political institutions and processes, strategic choice, etc). You can
be creative here, but keep in mind that proliferating categories is just as counter-
productive as dumping everything in one large list. There is nothing wrong with
events having multiple causes. In these cases, take care to note whether these
must operate together to bring about the outcome. You may not organize the list
around wars (that is, list several wars and then present multiple possible causes
for each).

The idea here is not to have a laundry list of possibilities copied from some book, but a list
you come up with based on your readings. The goal is to engage in an inductive exercise
that enables you to construct explanations of events and relate these, if possible, to IR
theory. Ideally, you will notice lacunae or inconsistencies in the latter, which will open
the door for the original research necessary for the third requirement.

3. Research Paper (50%). You will write an original research paper, which will be
due to me by noon on Friday, December 11. You must clear the topic with me
first. You may:
a. write an analytic narrative (theory-based explanation of events);
b. offer a new theory or modify an existing one (it may be verbal or mathe-
matical – game-theoretic, agent-based, evolutionary, or otherwise – in
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 which case you must present at least partial solutions) using history as
motivation or illustration;
c. compare and contrast existing theories using case studies; or
d. evaluate an existing theory using multiple historical cases.
Although this list of possibilities is not exhaustive, you may not write a literature
review, an information dump, or a purely narrative account.

I will not give incompletes for the paper or the list of causes without documented proof of
extreme circumstances as defined by University rules. Late submissions will be penalized
one-half of a letter grade for each day they are late. If you decide to engage in an ambi-
tious project that cannot be completed within the time frame, I may allow it provided you
can still turn in an acceptable draft by the deadline. I will not permit open-ended com-
mitments without such an “interim” product.

READINGS: The readings will be drawn from a number of books. I have endeavored
to ensure that all books are still in print and easily available for purchase but in some
cases this has not been possible. I have not ordered any books through the UCSD books-
tore and am leaving bargain-hunting and purchase decisions entirely up to you. If you
decide not to buy, you should know that the library might have only one copy (or none
at all), and that this copy might have been checked out and unavailable in time for your
needs. ILL takes time, so plan ahead and coordinate with your colleagues accordingly.

The following books are very useful general overviews of diplomatic relations, military
technology, and state organization:

1. McNeil, William H. 1982. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Socie-
ty since A.D. 1000. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
2. Parker, Geoffrey. 1996. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of
the West, 1500 – 1800. 2nd Ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
3. Strachan, Hew. 1983. European Armies and the Conduct of War. London: Routledge.
4. Black, Jeremy. 2002. European International Relations, 1648—1815. Palgrave Mac-
millan.
5. Wawro, Geoffrey. 2000. Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792 – 1914. London: Rout-
ledge.
6. Bridge F.R., and Roger Bullen. 2004. The Great Powers and the European States Sys-
tem, 1814—1914. 2nd Ed. New York: Longman.
7. Anderson, M.S. 2003. The Ascendancy of Europe, 1815—1914. 3rd Ed. Longman.

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Week 1: Historiography

Required Readings:

1. Stern, Fritz. (Ed.) 1973. The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present. New
York: Vintage Books. 2nd Edition. Introduction, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, and 13 from
Part I, and Chapters 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, and 14 from Part II.
2. Schroeder, Paul W. 1997. “History and International Relations Theory: Not Use
of Abuse, but Fit or Misfit.” International Security, 22(1): 64—74.
3. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1997. “History, Theory, and Common Ground.” International
Security, 22(1): 75—85.

Suggested Readings:

1. Fischer, David Hackett. 1970. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical

Thought. New York: Harper & Row.
2. Trachtenberg, Marc. 2006. The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
3. Gaddis, John Lewis. 1993. “Tragedy of Cold War History.” Diplomatic History,
Winter: 1—16.
4. Cummings, Bruce. 1993. “‘Revisiting Postrevisionism’: or, The Poverty of Theory
in Diplomatic History.” Diplomatic History, Fall: 539—569.

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Week 2: From 1618 to 1660, Focus on the Thirty Years War

Required Readings:

1. Wedgwood, Cicely V. 1938. The Thirty Years War. New York: New York Review
of Books.
2. Black, Jeremy. 2002. European Warfare, 1494 – 1660. London: Routledge. Chapter
7, pp. 129 – 166.

Suggested Readings:

1. Tallett, Frank. 1992. War and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1495 – 1715. London:
Routledge.

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Week 3: From 1661 to 1762, Focus on the wars of Louis XIV

Required Readings:

1. Lynn, John A. 1999. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667 – 1714. London: Longman.
2. Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688 – 1783.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Suggested Readings:

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Weeks 4 – 5: From 1763 to 1814, Focus on the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars

Required Readings:

1. Breunig, Charles, and Matthew Levinger. 2002. The Revolutionary Era, 1789 –
1850. 3rd Edition. New York: W.W. Norton. Pp. 1 – 122.
2. Blanning, Tim. 1996. The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787 – 1802. London: Hodder
Arnold.
3. Esdaile, Charles. 2008. Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803 – 1815. New
York: Viking.

Suggested Readings:

1. Blanning, Tim. 1986. The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars. London: Long-
man.
2. Rothenberg, Gunther. 2006. The Napoleonic Wars. New York: Harper.

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Weeks 5 – 6: From 1815 to 1870 (Focus on the Wars of German Unification)

Required Readings:

1. Taylor, A.J.P. 1954. The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848 – 1918. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
2. Carr, William. 1991. The Origins of the Wars of German Unification. London: Long-
man.

Suggested Readings:

1. Bartlett, C.J. 1996. Peace, War, and the European Powers, 1814 – 1914. London:
Macmillan.
2. Schroeder, Paul W. 1994. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763 – 1848. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press.
3. Goldfrank, David M. 1994. The Origins of the Crimean War. London: Longman.
4. Showalter, Dennis. 2004. The Wars of German Unification. London: Hodder Ar-
nold.
5. Wetzel, David. 2001. A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the Origins of the
Franco-Prussian War. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
6. Coppa, Frank J. 1992. The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence. London:
Longman.

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Weeks 7 – 8: From 1871 to 1918, Focus on the First World War

Required Readings:

1. Joll, James, and Gordon Martel. 2007. The Origins of the First World War. 3rd Edi-
tion. London: Longman.
2. Strachan, Hew. 2003. The First World War. New York: Penguin.
3. Herrmann, David G. 1996. The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World
War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
4. Ferro, Marc. 1973. The Great War, 1914 – 1918. London: Routledge.

Suggested Readings:

1. Broadberry, Stephen, and Mark Harrison. (Eds.) 2005. The Economics of World War
I. New York: Cambridge University Press.
2. Strachan, Hew. 2004. Financing the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
3. Hamilton, Richard F., and Holger H. Herwig. (Eds.) 2003. The Origins of World
War I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Mombauer, Annika. 2002. The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and
Consensus. London: Longman.
5. Albertini, Luigi. 2005 (1952). The Origins of the War of 1914. Three Volumes. New
York: Enigma Books.

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Weeks 9 – 10: From 1919 to 1945, Focus on the Second World War

Required Readings:

1. Taylor, A.J.P. 1961. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: Touchstone.
2. Overy, Richard, and Andrew Wheatcroft. 1999. The Road to War. Revised and
Updated Edition. London: Penguin Books.
3. Bell, P.M.H. 2007. The Origins of the Second World War in Europe. 3rd Edition. Lon-
don: Longman.
4. Wright, Gordon. 1968. The Ordeal of Total War, 1939 – 1945. Prospect Heights:
Waveland Press.

Suggested Readings:

1. Harrison, Mark. (Ed.) 1998. The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in In-
ternational Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2. Iriye, Akira. 1987. The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific. Har-
low: Pearson.
3. Gorodetsky, Gabriel. 1999. Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Rus-
sia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
4. Rothwell, Victor. 2005. War Aims in the Second World War: War Aims of the Major
Belligerents, 1939 – 45. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
5. Eubank, Keith. 1992. World War II: Roots and Causes. 2nd Edition. Lexington: D.C.
Heath & Company.
6. Keegan, John. 1989. The Second World War. New York: Viking.
7. Erickson, John. 1975. The Road to Stalingrad. New Haven: Yale University Press.
8. Erickson, John. 1983. The Road to Berlin. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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