Martin Wight - Post-war Years

Post-war Years

In 1946, Wight was recruited by David Astor, then editor of The Observer to act as the newspaper's correspondent at the inaugural sessions of the United Nations at Lake Success. Witnessing at first-hand the early diplomatic wrangles at the UN reinforced his scepticism about the possibility of lasting co-operation between sovereign states - a view reflected in the first edition of his Power Politics.

In 1947, Wight went back again at Chatham House, collaborating with Toynbee on the production of the Surveys of International Affairs covering the war-years and contributing to his A Study of History. After two years, he was taken on as a Reader in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. There Wight lectured on international organisations and later on international theory, the latter lectures becoming influential in what has become known as the 'English school of international relations'. Ironically, these lectures were first delivered in the United States, at the University of Chicago, where Wight spent a term in 1957. Reconstituted and published in 1990, International Theory: The Three Traditions seeks to make sense of the history of thought about international politics by dividing it into the categories of realism, rationalism and revolutionism, sometimes known as the Machiavellian, Grotian and Kantian traditions.

In 1959, Wight was invited by the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield to join the British committee on the theory of international politics, a group initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. He presented to that committee his most definitive statements on international theory, notably 'Western Values in International Relations' and an essay on 'The Balance of Power', both subsequently published in Diplomatic Investigations (1966). His contributions to the Committee of the late 1960s and early 1970s were gathered together after his death by Hedley Bull, and published as Systems of States (1977).

In 1960, Wight left the LSE to become the founding Dean of European Studies and Professor of History at the new University of Sussex. There he devoted much of his time to the development of that University's distinctive curriculum, the course in European Studies reflecting his conviction that students should learn not just European history, but also the classics, literature and languages.