E.H. Carr and the Crisis of Twentieth-Century Liberalism

Abstract

E.H. Carr’s contribution to IR is recognised as being of central importance in the history of the field. But it is sometimes forgotten that he began to develop his world viewpoint — through a critique of liberalism — almost 20 years before he published his classic The Twenty Years’ Crisis in 1939. These views began to take shape during the Paris peace negotiations in 1919, and were then given sharper definition still following the world economic crash and the launching of the first of many Five Year Plans in the USSR. Carr’s thought continued to evolve while holder — ironically — of the liberal-inspired Woodrow Wilson Chair in Aberystwyth, a position he held until 1947. The onset of the Cold War and his decision to undertake a sympathetic study of early Soviet history strengthened the reputation he had already acquired as the enfant terrible of the British establishment. A few years after his death in 1982, however, communism and the USSR collapsed, dealing his anti-liberal perspective a serious political blow. However, new problems at the heart of the world order today make Carr a writer from whom much can still be learned about the causes of crisis and the limits of liberalism.