“The great extent and rapid increase in international trade, in being the principle guarantee of the peace of the world is the great permanent security for the uninterrupted progress of the ideas., institutions and the character of the human race”. The identification of trade as a major source of human progress has a long intellectual tradition of which John Stuart Mill was only one, though possibly its most distinguished propagator. In the U.S.A. the assumption of a positive association between free trade and, at the international level, peace and security, and, at the domestic level, democracy and the guarantee of individual liberty, has been most explicitly associated with the Secretary of State, Gordell Hull: “International commerce conducted on a fair basis … is the greatest civilizer in the experience of the world”. It was Hull in concert with a number of like-minded officials at the State Department just prior to and after the end of the Second World War who laid down the intellectual framework for American foreign economic policy which successive Presidents and Secretaries of State have consistently endorsed, though with differing degrees of emphasis.

Hobbes' conception of relations between states has attracted attention from two directions. Students of political theory who have focused on Hobbes have from time to time looked beyond their central preoccupations and noted briefly the relevance of his doctrine for the international arena. The external relations of Leviathan are for them on the fringe of Hobbes' theory. Students of international relations on the other hand invoke Hobbes' name frequently as a kind of shorthand for a particular approach to the international world, one that is also associated with Machiavelli, and usually called the ‘realist’ approach. By contrast with the political theorists, they tend to look from the outside into Hobbes’ theory and to ask whether and how far the ‘domestic’ situation of individuals in a Hobbesian state of nature bears an analogy with the ‘external’ situation of states in relationship to one another.

In the last decade a number of scholars have criticized the dominant paradigm in international relations inquiry. Two major criticisms have been levelled at some of the advocates of paradigm change: they do not clearly demonstrate the dominance of a specific paradigm, and they have produced no data-based studies to demonstrate the obsolescence of the fundamental assumptions of the field. This paper attempts to meet these criticisms by systematically testing what has become known as the “Colour It Morgenthau” thesis, namely the claim that the Realist paradigm has dominated quantitative international relations and has up to this time failed to explain behaviour adequately.

Since twentieth century society has been so badly scarred by wars between the major industrial powers it is difficult to understand how it was that capitalist industry was once held to be the great material and moral force which would bring peace to the world. The idea was, nonetheless, firmly implanted in the minds of many men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Richard Cobden, the English radical politician, was one of these and the eradication of international conflict became the central concern of his life.

Generalisation about foreign policy is inevitable. It is the external face of a country, turned toward the world and taken by others to characterize the society behind it. Politicians and commentators continually search for ways in which to describe the essence of their nation's foreign policy, partly for themselves, and partly to convey its direction and values to interested parties at home or abroad. One of the most natural and time-honoured solutions they have hit upon has been the concept of ‘role’

In my study, The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations, reviewed in Hedley Bull's interesting article, there are no chapters devoted to natural law thinkers before the thirteenth century. Any lengthening of an already long manuscript might have diminished its prospects of publication. In the absence of a full survey of the strengths and weaknesses of earlier theories, there are various explicit or implied judgements on positions of Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero and Augustine in chapters dealing primarily with other matters. Whilst referring to sources of Aquinas's doctrine, I did not give a detailed account of the historical formation of his teaching. I concentrated upon St. Thomas's discussion of the various kinds of law and especially upon the doctrine of eternal law which he brought to a certain perfection. In doing this, I was consoled by the view which I shared with Vincent McNabb that “it was always the thought of Aquinas never the history of that thought which seemed of greatest worth…” Indeed, given the incompleteness of so much of the discussion on the intellectual reconciliation of natural and divine law before Aquinas, it is arguable that McNabb was hardly exaggerating very greatly when he wrote that Aquinas's treatise on law in the Summa theologiae “would seem be the first great treatise ever written on law”.