The Prelude: International Relations from the Edge

Abstract

As we have seen, John Burton became a university teacher of International Relations in 1963, when he joined the staff of University College in London not far short of his fiftieth birthday. At that point, taking on the task of interpreting and presenting International Relations to students and then writing himself, he joined an identifiable community of scholars in so far as he was obliged, in his new role, to engage with International Relations as an academic discipline, a set of intellectual concerns and a community of scholars. Yet he had written much before this, from several perspectives and in different roles, and much of what he wrote was about international relations, if sometimes only in passing or as part of a wider brief. What he wrote, and the significance of it, before he fully engaged with International Relations, is the subject of this chapter.