Decolonising International Relations: teaching with historical context and non-Western theories

In this chapter we investigate the topic of decolonisation from the perspective of a UK International Relations (IR) classroom. IR is a discipline rooted in colonial history and has a long and complex relationship with the mechanisms of imperial domination, whether that is in training bureaucrats for their work in colonial territories, to modern day understandings of “the east” as exotic, unknowable, and in need of “taming.” To explore this, the chapter examines two core arguments: 1) that the teaching of IR necessarily demands that we face the origins of the discipline and discuss this with students in creative and critical ways, and 2) that one way in which we might address this in the present is through the teaching of non-western theories of IR, bringing this work “back in” and understanding the value of works that sit outside the traditional canon.