Concept formation in historical International Relations

For a long time, International Relations’ (IR) spatiotemporal parameters could be summarized in two words: Western and modern. The recent growth of Historical IR has contributed to a dramatic extension of these spatiotemporal coordinates, extending the discipline’s gaze to places and times that had previously been neglected. A key challenge that this ‘historical turn’ presents for IR theory, and that we take up in this article, is the proper formulation of analytical concepts capable of ‘travelling’ across different places, cultures, languages and time periods. So far, the existing Historical IR literature on concepts has focused primarily on the historicization of existing categories (especially through conceptual history and genealogical methods) and has not yet addressed the problem of concept formation head-on. In this article, we take up this challenge by theorizing the role of ‘travelling concepts’ in Historical IR – concepts that are neither entirely bound to their specific context nor entirely divorced from it. Returning to Max Weber’s work on ideal types, we suggest that travelling concepts are not only possible for historicist work, but necessary, and that it is therefore important for Historical IR scholars to be open and reflexive about their use of such concepts. By rejecting essentialism and recognizing the historical situatedness of the scholar, Weber encourages us to view the entire lexicon of Historical IR as an evolving archive for conceptual historians of the future to explore.