Power and the Pursuit of Peace: Theory and Practice in the History of Relations Between States

by F.H. Hinsley

In the last years of the nineteenth century peace proposals were first stimulated by fear of the danger of war rather than in consequence of its outbreak. In this study of the nature and history of international relations Mr Hinsley presents his conclusions about the causes of war and the development of men's efforts to avoid it. In the first part he examines international theories from the end of the middle ages to the establishment of the League of Nations in their historical setting. This enables him to show how far modern peace proposals are merely copies or elaborations of earlier schemes. He believes there has been a marked reluctance to test these theories not only against the formidable criticisms of men like Rousseau, Kant and Bentham, but also against what we have learned about the nature of international relations and the history of the practice of states. This leads him to the second part of his study - an analysis of the origins of the modern states' system and of its evolution between the eighteenth century and the First World War.

Genres: History, Politics

428 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1967

About the author

Sir Francis Harry Hinsley OBE, was an English historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Intelligence during the Second World War. He was known as Harry Hinsley.

Reviews

[Mike Clinton]

Well-written not only for a work in the IR theory canon but for any work of historical analysis. Hinsley competently, informatively, and lucidly develops a consistent thesis that insists on the balance of power among Great States as the key to international stability. He marks the emergence of this system of global (or Western) politics to the eighteenth century but examines traces of it to the decline of the medieval period. He also analyzes various schemes of international organization advanced for varying motives that have contested the balance-of-power system, seeing in them the antecedents of the League of Nations and United Nations that appeared in response to the catastrophic world wars of the twentieth century. Hinsley regards these attempts at international organization as misguided and ineffectual insofar as they sought to usurp the fundamental dynamic of the balance of power that characterized the relations among states. My own instincts recoil at such assertive "realism" (in the IR usage of the term), with its unrelenting assertion of the primacy of the state and zero-sum calculations in inter-state relations, etc., but Hinsley presents his case with a mastery of knowledge and a masterful analysis. I don't have to agree with it to admire it. Plus, he gives serious attention--with only occasionally a faint hint of condescension, if you're really looking for it--to the proposals for structuring the international system to preserve peace (Sully, Saint-Pierre, Kant, etc.), along with the peace movements and advocacy campaigns for arbitration and international law that grew in prominence through the nineteenth century. If he rejects the bases of their arguments and efforts, he nevertheless recognized them as worth commentary at a time (1962) when most serious scholars of history and international relations ignored them.

[Mark Granfors]

Breathtaking in scope, this book is marred by its execrable style. Many sentences are almost impossible to parse; I found myself rereading parts of the text several times to figure out what the author was trying to say. Nevertheless, the book.

[Bernard English]

Very roughly speaking, the first two parts of the book are "theory" part referred to in the subtitle. It covers many long-forgotten peace proposals, or as Hinsley suggests, thinly veiled plans to dominate Europe by Spain or France. It's the mandatory background. The "practice" of the subtitle, found in Part III (again very roughly)  focuses on the origins of World War I and II and how the League of Nations failed and how the United Nations fared and its prospects. I thought there were plenty of really illuminating pages here.  In the opening of chapter 14 on the "Failure of the League of Nations," he shoots down dozens of hypothetical measures taken and not taken which people claim would have saved the League. Hinsley points out that there were fundamental obstacles to the "establishment and operation of any international organization,"  and the League, just like its numerous long-forgotten predecessors, faced the same obstacles. He emphasizes that the "opposition of interests and sentiments" of the public was a principal hindrance, regardless of the "what if" scenarios (covering among other things, its administrative structure) painted by League enthusiasts after it died.
Hinsleys perceives Soviet foreign policy somewhat along the lines of Murray Rothbard, claiming that, at least, after the Potsdam Conference, the Soviets were not at all greedy for more territory as was generally thought in the West. His interpretation of the Soviets is so relevant to the current Ukraine War that I'll just quote it:“Although they are somewhat hidden from its author, the most significant facts in the most recent analysis of the Potsdam Conference  of 1945–which was the nearest thing to a general peace settlement that the Powers were able to achieve–are, her determination to have her way in the settlement of Poland, Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary and Roumania and, second, that not even this determination was as pronounced as Russia’s lack of interest in the more outlying matters in which the Western Powers dominated, as she now dominated in Eastern Europe. . . . It is perhaps time that the limited nature of Russia’s aims in the post-war settlement were given as much prominence as the determination with which she pursued them. It is certainly time to abandon the view that, apart from completing her position by the absorption of Czechoslovakia, she ever intended further expansion into Europe, and that only the American monopoly of the nuclear weapons up to the 1950’s prevented catastrophe for the West."
Much of what he says here I believe carries over to the recent attack upon Ukraine by Russia.

In the concluding pages he gives his sense of where we were (1960's) and where things are headed. Due to the greater conformity in the political and social fields, within the West as well as between the West and Russia, he opines that much of the struggle between Russia and the West is actually occurring within a single tradition. This ought to be recognized by people and if it were, it seems to me it would be very hopeful for international relations. At the time the book was written, China and India did not loom large so Hinsley doesn't have much to say about their role in the international arena. But again, like a good Misesian, which he doesn't claim to be, he recognizes the critical time element in economic development. He writes that "no amount of effort on their own part, not all the resources of Western aid, can be expected seriously to compress the journey across the barrier of generations which the West has achieved." I think Part III of the book gives an awfully good account of more recent history and would highly recommend the book, even if one is not into the dusty treaty and alliance history of the earlier parts of the book.

[偏執者]

Definitely not the right first book to read on this topic. I wish I had more general philosophical knowledge of the thinkers he is talking about, more general historical knowledge of the period he is talking about, and more historical knowledge of events around the time the book was written.

I still enjoyed it. The philosophy sections were hard. The more historical sections were still enjoyable despite the aforementioned difficulties and the more recent history and analysis, particularly about the UN and League of Nations, was great.

On the writing, the open punctuation style of mid-century british academics combined with Hinsley's incredibly long, complicated sentences did not match well. Many sentences were an absolute slog to get through, especially for topics I was already unfamiliar with.