The Unresolved Debate on the Dichotomy between History and International Relations: A Re-Appraisal

Abstract

There has been an unresolved contention between historians and international relations scholars on the content and composition of the interrelated disciplines. The deliberation among scholars is that international relations is part and parcel of History, while International Relations experts are of the view that History only forms a background to the subject-matter of their own study. Furtherance to these claims is that International Relations is even viewed as part of political science, in which case both historians and International Relations works form a continuum to analysis of major world events. Political scientists therefore agree that International Relations is under their fold, while international relations experts believe that International Relations can stand on its own. In light of these variants of opinions, this work attempts a reappraisal of these three major disciplines- History, International Relations and Political Science, which are highly interconnected but still strive to hold their own stables as independent disciplines. While obviously not refuting the difference in the approaches used by these disciplines, the work concludes that practitioners in these fields needs to do a lot of interdisciplinary borrowings from each other to augment and enrich their researches in the present and the future.

Keywords: Dichotomy, Debate, History, International Relations and Political Science.