E. H. Carr Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

This example E. H. Carr Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

Edward Hallett (“Ted”) Car r (1892–1982) was a British political scientist and historian noted for his contributions to international relations theory. A graduate of Cambridge, Carrhad a varied career that included service in the Foreign Office for more than twenty years and experience as a writer and assistant editor for The Times. He held several academic appointments and was the Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Relations at the University College of Wales and a fellow at Balliol College, Oxford.

Carr was a prolific author and his diplomatic experience colored his writing. He served as foreign officer in Riga, Latvia, after World War I (1914–1918) and the Russian Revolution of 1917 had a significant impact on his academic work. He emerged as one of Britain’s foremost experts on Russian, and later Soviet, history. Among his earlier significant works were biographies of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, German philosopher Karl Marx, and Russian revolutionary Michael Bakunin, published between 1931 and 1937, each of which received critical praise.

Although Carr’s opinion of the Russian Revolution was generally favorable, the Great Depression (1929) affirmed his growing distrust of liberal capitalism because of the social and economic inequalities apparent during it. In 1939, he published The Twenty Years’ Crisis, an overview of international relations between 1919 and 1939. In it Carr expanded on the work of earlier theorists such as Thucydides and Niccolò Machiavelli and helped define the main tenets of classical realism within international relations theory by differentiating between realism and utopianism (idealism). Central to Carr’s analysis was the significance of power in the development of global norms and ethics. He condemned idealism for its failure to incorporate the realities of contemporary international relations in visions of a utopia or ideal world. He further asserted that systemic war or revolution was often a necessary catalyst for significant social change, a contention rejected by his critics. However, he also initially advocated appeasement toward Nazi Germany, a position he revised in later editions of the book.

Carr’s other significant works on international relations include The Future of Nations: Independence or Interdependence? (1941) and International Relations Between the Two World Wars (1955). In 1946, he began work on what turned out to be the seminal fourteen-volume A History of the Soviet Union, published over the next thirty-two years. Carr was criticized for minimizing the brutality and totalitarianism of successive Soviet regimes and for overemphasizing the progressive features of Soviet communism. Nonetheless, his work was one of the most comprehensive overviews of the rise of the country to superpower status, beginning with the revolution through World War II (1939–1945).

A series of Carr’s Cambridge lectures were published in 1961 as What is History? In the essays, Carr analyzed the major contemporary schools of historiography. He argued against empiricism and instead contended that all historians employ a degree of subjectivity caused by their surroundings and the influences of the time period in which they live. Consequently, contemporary events and mores typically colored historians’ perceptions of the past, a trend Carr warned strongly against. The book proved highly influential and shaped historiography for the next twenty years.

Bibliography:

Cox, Michael, ed. E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal. London: Palgrave, 2000.
Haslam, Jonathan. The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr, 1892–1982. New York: Verso, 1999.
Jones, Charles. E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.