The inquiry and the birth of international relations, 1917-19

The centenary approaches of the establishment of the first chair in International Relations (IR) at Aberystwyth in 1919. In this paper, I argue that while revisionist historians are correct to claim that IR did not emerge in a “Big Bang”, 1917-19 was nevertheless an important moment in the history of IR — particularly in the US — which should be appreciated a century later. 1917 saw the creation of “The Inquiry”, a secret organization composed of academics set up by President Woodrow Wilson tasked with preparing the American delegation to the Paris peace negotiations. Continuing in the revisionists’ spirit, through the lens of the Inquiry, I suggest that early IR should be viewed as a social formation at the intersection of government, civil society, and academia, not as an academic specialty only. Rather than disbanding after Paris, crucially, the Inquiry was incorporated into the fledgling Council on Foreign Relations. Such a perspective prompts comparisons between 1917 and today. Empirically, how influential are the think tanks and research institutes that try to shape US foreign policy? Normatively, we might ask whether the limited yet elitist network represented by the Inquiry was better or worse than the expansive world of policy-making of today? Drawing on diverse sources, including original research at the Inquiry’s archive, I revisit the Inquiry and pose these questions to contemporary IR scholars.