476 J.-A. PEMBERTON
prepared for the meeting entitled ‘International Relations: An Academic
Discipline,’ Manning noted that there were many who, although aware
of the claim of international studies, were ‘yet to be persuaded’ that it
had or ought to have a ‘separate existence’.^163
In defending the claim of international studies to a separate existence,
Manning was specifically targeting those who considered that the study
of international relations was a branch of the study of political science. A
major argument in favour of locating international relations within the
domain of political science that was advanced at the time, was that inter-
war international relations scholars had failed to develop a scientific tech-
nique appropriate to the subject matter.
The view that the approach of interwar academics to the study of
international relations was unscientific and that the effect of this was
deleterious not only in intellectual terms but also in political terms, had
much currency in the early post-war period in Anglo-American circles.
For example, in a book sponsored by the CFR which was entitled The
Study of International Relations in American Universities and Colleges
(1947), Grayson Kirk, citing Carr’s ‘provocative analysis,’ insisted that
much of the interwar scholarship in field of international relations was
simply ‘propaganda’. Kirk maintained that interwar scholarship had
manifested an exaggerated belief in the League as an agency that would
‘usher in an era of somewhat mystical “international cooperation”’ and,
as a result, had failed to appreciate the realities of the power politics of
the day. He maintained that due to their misguided ‘Utopianism,’ teach-
ers of international relations in the interwar period had caused ‘a gen-
eration of American college students to underestimate the strength of
the divisive forces of international society’ and had ‘cast a shadow of aca-
demic disrepute over the new field,’ thereby inviting derision from more
established disciplines.^164
In a paper prepared for the Committee on International Relations
Research for the Social Science Research Council of the United States,
William T. R. Fox, also surveyed the American experience interwar
scholarship in the field of international relations. Although more elab-
orate than that of Kirk, his survey painted a broadly similar picture. In
(^164) Grayson Kirk, The Study of International Relations in American Universities and
Colleges (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1947), 4–5.
(^163) Manning, ‘International Relations: An Academic Discipline,’ 14.