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Edmund Burke and the theory of international relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

R. J. Vincent
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Extract

Burke did not count himself a theorist. Metaphysics, abstraction, was stuff for professor So If the speculation of the classroom was brought too close to the life of politics the result was unsettling, dangerous, revolutionary. Politicians should be people of practice not theory, attending to circumstance before principle, working within a tradition not innovating, reforming before countenancing revolution. They should be concerned with the whole of human nature and not just with human reason, with feeling as well as with thought.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1984, pp. 205 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1984

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References

1. For a formidable statement of this position see Freeman, Michael, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (Oxford, 1980).Google Scholar

2. From Macaulay's, Lord, ‘Essay on Southey's Colloquies on Society’, cited in Hughes, A. M. D. (ed.),Edmund Burke: Selections (Oxford, 1921), p. 27Google Scholar.

3. From Matthew Arnold's essay on ‘The Function of Criticism’ cited in Hughes, Edmund Burke: Selections.

4. Courtney, C. P., Montesquieu and Burke (Oxford, 1963), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

5. Burke, , A Vindication of Natural Society in Works (London, 1815)Google Scholar, vol. I.

6. But not a rationalist which is the term Wight sometimes used for his category of Grotians which he contrasted with realists (Machiavellians) and revolutionists (Kantians). Burke's greatest work was a denunciation of rationalism in politics. In view of this it would be perverse to count him a ‘rationalist’ despite Wight's influence in making this a term of art in classifying thought about international relations. The question of classification is returned to in the final section of the paper. On Wight's categories see Bull, Hedley, ‘Martin Wight and The Theory of International Relations’, British Journal of International Studies, vol. 2, no. 2 (1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porter, Brian, ‘Patterns of Thought and Practice: Martin Wight's International Theory’, in Donelan, Michael (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978).Google Scholar

7. Burke, , Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin, ed. C. C. O'Brien, 1968), p. 173Google Scholar.

8. See Ernest Barker, who has the spirit of religion as the ‘inmost essence’ of Burke's theory of politics, in ‘Burke on the French Revolution’ in Essays on Government (Oxford, 1945), pp. 226–8Google Scholar.

9. Reflections, p. 269.

10. Objecting to the Chancellor of France's assertion that all occupations were honourable, Burke suggested that the occupation of a hairdresser or tallow-chandler could not be a matter of honour to anybody, not least because they had not the leisure to gain the wisdom on which honour might be based. Accordingly, they should not be oppressed, but the state would itself be oppressed, if their kind gained office in it. Reflections, p. 138.

11. Reflections, pp. 118–19, 183.

12. Ibid. pp. 247–50.

13. See Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), p. 306Google Scholar.

14. See the discussion in Taylor Wilkins, Burleigh, The Problem of Burke's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1967), pp. 60–9Google Scholar.

15. Burke, Speech on a Motion for a Committee to Inquire into the State of the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, 16 June 1784 in Smith, Robert A., Edmund Burke on Revolution (New York, 1968), p. 113Google Scholar.

16. See Letter to William Smith on Catholic Emancipation, cited in Wilkins, The Problem of Burke, p. 213.

17. Wilkins, The Problem of Burke, p. 110.

18. Burke, Reflections, p. 183.

19. Ibid. p. 90.

20. Barker, ‘Burke on the French Revolution’, p. 222 n. 1.

21. Burke, Reflections, p. 148.

22. A Vindication of Natural Society, pp. 16–34.

23. Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism, p. 215.

24. Letters on the Regicide Peace, II, On the Genius and Character of the French Revolution as it Regards other Nations, Works, vol. 8, p. 217.

25. Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, November 1792, Works, vol. 7, pp. 89–97.

26. Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with respect to France, begun in October 1793, Works, vol. 7, p. 139.

27. Letters on the Regicide Peace, I, On the Overtures of Peace, Works, vol. 8, pp. 169–71.

28. A Letter to a Noble Lord, 1796, in Smith, Burke on Revolution, p. 241.

29. Thoughts on French Affairs, 1791, in Smith, Burke on Revolution, p. 186. Burke's emphasis.

30. Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism, p. 167. For an extended discussion of the ambivalence of Burke towards both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, see Kramnick, Isaac, The Rage of Edmund Burke (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

31. See Speech in the Debate on the Army Estimates, 9 February 1790, Works, vol. V, pp. 7–10; Letters on the Regicide Peace, I, On the Overtures of Peace, Works, vol. 8, p. 185.

32. Ibid. p. 187.

33. The distinction I have in mind here is that between a system of states defined by their mere interaction, and a society of states defined by attachment to common rules and institutions. See Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London, 1977), pp. 9–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 13.

34. Letters on the Regicide Peace, I, On the Overtures of Peace, Works, vol. 8, p. 185.

35. Letter to Grenville, 18 August 1792, cited in Cobban, A., EdmundBurke andthe Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century (London, 1929), pp. 120–1Google Scholar.

36. See Thoughts on French Affairs, in Smith, Burke on Revolution, p. 186.

37. Letter to Grenville, cited in Cobban, Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century, p. 116.

38. See Appendix to Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France, begun October 1793, Works, vol. 7, pp. 201–15; Vattel, The Law of Nations, Book II, chapter IV, sections 56, 53, 49.

39. Annual Register, 1772 (London, 1773), p. 2Google Scholar.

40. Ibid.

41. Letters on the Regicide Peace, I, On the Overtures of Peace, Works, vol. 8, p. 182.

42. See Gierke, Otto, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, translation and introduction by Maitland, F. W. (Cambridge, 1951), p. 64Google Scholar.

43. Reflections, p. 135.

44. Bull, Hedley, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in Butterfield, H. and Wight, M., Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966), p. 52Google Scholar.

45. Letters on the Regicide Peace, I, On the Overtures of Peace, Works, vol. 8, p. 181.

46. Ibid. pp. 180–1.

47. Introduction to Reflections, pp. 56–62.

48. Wight, Martin, Systems of States (Leicester, 1977), p. 129Google Scholar.

49. See Levi, Werner, ‘International Law in a Multicultural World’, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 4 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. See Vincent, R. J., ‘The Factor of Culture in the Global International Order’, Year Book of World Affairs (1980)Google Scholar.

51. Wight, Systems of States, p. 46.

52. Mahoney, Thomas H. D., Edmund Burke and Ireland (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Hughes, Edmund Burke: Selections, pp. 92, 99–100.

54. Ibid. pp. III, 114.

55. Kramnick, The Rage of Edmund Burke, p. 145.

56. Quoted in O'Brien, Reflections, introduction, p. 12.

57. From the letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, 1792, cited in Hughes, Edmund Burke: Selections, p. 75.

58. Mazrui, Ali, Towards a Pax Africana (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar, ch. 2.

59. Freeman, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism, pp. 233–4.

60. From the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, quoted in Courtney, Montesquieu and Burke, p. 102.

61. From the Speech on the East India Bill, December 1783, cited in Hughes, Edmund Burke: Selections, p. 111.