The Australian National University's Department of International Relations: the early years

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the re-evaluation of the formative years of the emergent international relations discipline. Work on this topic, extensive over the past decade and a half, has overturned a number of the foundational myths of the global discipline, especially regarding the period between the two world wars. The literature on international relations in Australia, slow to reflect this re-evaluation, generally still locates the first important developments in the 1960s, and characterises the scholarship that emerged as predominantly ‘realist’. This study both pushes back the boundaries and challenges the theoretical perspectives used to categorise thinking in Australia at that time. A student of C. A. W. Manning and thus conversant with British ideas of ‘international society’, George Modelski's early exposure to theoretical work in the USA and his endeavours to give his department a strongly regional focus gave his work a richness and multifaceted character not easily captured by the ‘realist–rationalist’ dichotomy. Modelski went on from the Australian National University to become a major figure in international relations in the USA, contributing to the original debates on globalisation and best known for his work on ‘long cycles’ in world politics.

Keywords:

• international relations discipline
• Australian international relations
• long cycles in international relations

Notes

1. This makes it clear that I left Australia in 1966—that is, in the mid, and not in the early, 1960s.

2. Indyk (1985) has no discussion of Lindsay's work, except for one ‘out of context’ footnote (302n4) referring to a 1957 statement advocating a preference for those who work on Asian problems, rather than on ‘more purely academic’ questions. The footnote seems to imply that Lindsay referred critically to the work of Burns and Modelski (274n4), whereas, in fact, the quote hinted at the controversy then concerning the appointment of Martin Wight.

3. Having also, coincidentally, recently reviewed Kaplan's 1957 System and Process in International Politics (see Modelski 1959b).

4. A request for ‘comments and suggestions’ in late 1965 elicited uniformly positive responses. Dr Castles (University of Adelaide) wrote: ‘I have found them most interesting... and quite valuable in the work I undertake... in international law’; Professor H. Simon (University of Melbourne), ‘most valuable, and I am very grateful’; Professor F. Sonderman (Colorado College), ‘most grateful... find them of uniformly high quality’; Professor Strauss-Hupe (University of Pennsylvania), ‘I read Vellut with great interest... a useful study’; and Professor G. L. Goodwin (LSE), ‘many thanks; a good and interesting series’.

5. Burton left for University College, London, in 1963.

6. Just as Hedley Bull saw it in The Anarchical Society (1977), except for giving greater weight to order.

7. A selection of more recent writings may be accessed at: http://faculty.washington.edu/modelski/

8. The Age (Melbourne) called it ‘one of the most important books of the year’ (July 11, 1959).

9. While Lindsay approved of my ‘atomic’ project, I never discussed with him the China article; at the time of publication he had left on study leave. The closing sentence of that 1958 piece was: ‘In years to come, a strong Communist China will become the chief preoccupation of Australian foreign policy’ (Modelski 1958a, 68).

10. Even the Bulletin (Sydney) reviewed it in 1961.

11. I came with an introduction from the Prime Minister's Office.

12. Modelski (1962c, 1963b) and Rathausky (1962) deal with South-East Asian affairs and are possibly the first collections of IR-related documents in Australia.

13. The Sydney Morning Herald (December 1963) and others reprinted the introduction.

14. Indyk (1985, 272) observed that, in my work, I had failed to implement the model ‘for any particular state’. In about 1958, I offered to write a review of Australian foreign policy of that year, with the help of concepts developed in my dissertation, but was turned down by the editor of the Australian Journal of History and Politics (where such reviews were a regular feature) on the grounds that the writing of these was restricted to the Australian-born only. A similar rule apparently was then in force regarding the editorship of Australian Outlook, the journal of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (a practice long since discarded).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Modelski

George Modelski is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and a noted authority on evolutionary world politics. He is the author (with William Thompson) of Leading Sectors and World Powers: The Coevolution of Global Politics and Economics (University of South Carolina Press, 1995)