An Australian School of International Relations

Abstract

This book set out to test the proposition that there was little or nothing of an Australian IR discipline before 1960. The extensive and influential work of the figures considered in this book, not least the fact that all except Eggleston taught in a specifically academic context and all otherwise contributed to scholarly research, publication, and policy debate in international studies, refutes that proposition. This argument is based in part on an examination and evaluation of diverse materials, especially teaching and manuscript sources, that have previously been ignored. The confident but often ill-founded generalizations of the existing secondary literature are perhaps a demonstration of the pitfalls likely to be encountered when IR writers attempt historical analysis only on the basis of the readily available published record.