482 J.-A. PEMBERTON
For both Manning and Vernant, the ultimate aim of a sociological
study of international relations is not to obtain a series of snap-shots but
to obtain, as Vernant expressed it, a kind of ‘synthesis...a complete and
objective picture of international society.’^180 It is clear that by 1950 both
Manning and Vernant were struggling to assert their sociological con-
ception of international relations and its status as an independent disci-
pline against the claims that the subject was really a subset of political
science. Such claims were being issued by American scholars in particu-
lar, often accompanied by an emphasis on the role of national power at
the expense of the social milieu.^181
That the view of international relations as a branch of political sci-
ence was gaining ground at UNESCO is evidenced by an observation
made by Walter R. Sharp, an American political scientist in the employ
of UNESCO’s Department of Social Science. Sharp, who had also been
in attendance at the Fourteenth Session of the ISC as an observer on
behalf of UNESCO, maintained at the Windsor meeting that there was
a ‘certain danger’ in according sociology too prominent in the study
of international relations. Sociology, he warned, as a well-organised
and powerful discipline, might feel encouraged to ‘take over the whole
thing,’ the result being ‘unfortunate reactions from Political Science,
Law and other aspects of the total field.’^182
While Manning’s reaction to this claim was that he did not think
that this was a ‘very serious danger,’ he well may have been worried
that Sharp’s observation related to an agenda that posed a serious dan-
ger to the ISC.^183 Sharp advised the same meeting not to overstate the
synthetic nature of ‘International Relations’: not all the specialities rel-
evant to it, he pointed out, occupied the same plane. The subject of
(^181) Manning, ‘Report of the General Rapporteur,’ 72–73, 75. Manning criticised Sprout
for shifting his focus away from the role of international society to that of national power.
Vernant attended the Windsor meeting as secretary general of the ISC. The chair of the
meeting in Windsor was Walter Russell Crocker, a professor of international relations at the
Australian National University.
(^182) Walter R. Sharp, 1950, quoted in Manning, ‘Report of the General Rapporteur,’ 73.
See also International Social Science Bulletin 1, nos. 3–4 (1949), 93.
(^183) Manning, ‘Report of the General Rapporteur,’ 73.
(^180) Vernant, ‘International Relations: The Work of the International Studies Conference,’
57.