Edward Hallett Carr

Edward Hallett Carr CBE (born June 28, 1892 in London , † November 3, 1982 ibid, usually called E. H. Carr ) was a British historian , diplomat and political scientist . He is for his work What is history? and known as a co-founder of realism in international relations .

Life

After his school education at the Merchant Taylors' School in London he studied the classics at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge . Carr escaped the World War I battlefield due to a heart weakened by illness; instead, he was recruited into the diplomatic service. After receiving appropriate training, he began his service in the British Foreign Ministry in 1916 : As the person responsible for freight traffic during the war via Sweden to Russia, Carr first came into contact with Russia and the Russian Revolution - one of his later scientific hobbyhorses.

He entered the stage of great politics as a member of the British delegation to the Paris peace negotiations in 1919, although Carr later admitted bitterly to his role as Russia expert at the peace conference: "Nothing that I did or wrote had any importance at all". While he continued to work in the Foreign Office in the interwar period, he resigned from the diplomatic service in 1936 and was appointed professor of international politics at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth that same year . It was here that Carr experienced the second world historical catastrophe of his life, the outbreak of World War II in 1939. He was first transferred to the British Information Department and worked for the Times between 1941 and 1946 , for which he had previously worked occasionally. His academic career took Carr then from 1953 to 1955 at Balliol College of Oxford University again - in 1966 he was appointed its honorary member. From 1955 he taught as a professor of history at Trinity College , Cambridge. In 1956 he became a member ( fellow ) of the British Academy . In 1967 Carr was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1970 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Edward Hallett Carr died in 1982 at the age of 90.

Throughout his life, Carr's academic work focused on Russian history and politics in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Russian Revolution . It gave him - according to his own statements - a sense of history that he never lost again. While he approached the subject at a young age as a biographer, including those of Dostoevsky and Karl Marx , his magnum opus in particular became a standard work. His series A History of Soviet Russia , begun in 1944 and ended in 1977 by the fourteenth volume, made him the “first genuine historian of the Soviet regime”. With his study The Twenty Years' Crisis , in which he analyzed international relations between 1919 and 1939, the former diplomat and “professional practitioner” Carr provided one of the fundamental studies in international relations research to this day. In addition, he always dealt critically with history in general and the points of view of his colleagues in particular - another focus of his scientific work. His work “ What is history? “The lecture series from 1961 on which it is based is certainly the most famous and controversial statement of Carr on this subject.

Fonts (selection)

• Dostoevsky (1821-1881). A New Biography. Houghton Mifflin, New York 1931.
• The Romantic Exiles. A Nineteenth Century Portrait Gallery. Victor Gollancz, London 1933.
• Karl Marx. A Study in Fanaticism. Dent, London 1934.
• Michael Bakunin. Macmillan, London 1937.
• International Relations Since the Peace Treaties. Macmillan, London 1937.
• The Twenty Years' Crisis , 1919-1939. An Introduction to the Study of International Relations. Macmillan, London 1939; New edition 1946.
• Britain. A Study of Foreign Policy from the Versailles Treaty to the Outbreak of War. Longmans, Green & Co., London / New York 1939.
• Conditions of Peace. Macmillan, London 1942.
• Nationalism and After. Macmillan, London 1945.
• The Soviet Impact on the Western World. 1946.
• A History of Soviet Russia . Macmillan, London 1950-1978. A total of 14 volumes: The Bolshevik Revolution (3 volumes), The Interregnum (1 volume), Socialism in One Country (5 volumes), and The Foundations of a Planned Economy (5 volumes).
• The New Society. Macmillan, London 1951.
• German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939. Geoffrey Cumberlege, London 1952.
• What is history? 1961. New edition ed. by RW Davies, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1986.
• 1917 Before and After. Macmillan, London 1969. American edition: The October Revolution Before and After. Knopf, New York 1969.
• The Russian Revolution. From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929). Macmillan, London 1979.
• From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays. St. Martin's Press, New York 1980.
• The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935. Macmillan, London 1982.
• The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War. 1984.

Works to translate into German (selection)

• The new company. Aspects of mass democracy (translated from the English by Klaus Figge and Waltraud Stein). Frankfurt a. M. 1968.
• The Russian Revolution. Lenin and Stalin 1917–1929 (from the English by Friedrich W. Gutbrod). Stuttgart 1980.
• What is history (Translated from the English by Siglinde Summerer and Gerda Kurz). 6th edition, Stuttgart 1981.
• Romantic of the Revolution. A Russian family novel from the 19th century (from the English by Reinhard Kaiser). Frankfurt a. M. 2004, series The Other Library .

Web links

• Literature by and about Edward Hallett Carr in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Edward Hallett Carr at perlentaucher.de
• Entry on Edward H. Carr in the virtual personal lexicon of international relations (PIBv), edited by Ulrich Menzel , Institute for Social Sciences at the Technical University of Braunschweig

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert William Davies: Edward Hallett Carr 1892-1982. In: Proceedings of the British Academy 69 (1983), p. 475 f.
2. ↑ Jonathan Haslam: EH Carr's Search for Meaning, 1892-1982. In: Michael Cox (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. 22.
3. ^ Edward Hallett Carr: An Autobiography. In: Michael Cox (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. XV.
4. ^ Edward Hallett Carr: An Autobiography. In: Michael Cox (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. XV.
5. ^ Robert William Davies: Edward Hallett Carr 1892-1982. In: Proceedings of the British Academy 69 (1983), p. 485.
6. ^ Robert William Davies: Edward Hallett Carr 1892-1982. In: Proceedings of the British Academy 69: 487 (1983). Edward Hallett Carr: An Autobiography. In: Michael Cox (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. XIX.
7. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 12, 2020 . 
8. ^ Member History: Edward Hallett Carr. American Philosophical Society, accessed May 30, 2018 . 
9. ^ Michael Cox: Introduction: EH Carr - a Critical Appraisal. In the S. (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. 1.
10. ^ Edward Hallett Carr: An Autobiography. In: Michael Cox (Ed.): EH Carr. A critical appraisal. Basingstoke / New York 2000, p. XV.
11. ^ Robert William Davies: Edward Hallett Carr 1892-1982. In: Proceedings of the British Academy 69 (1983), p. 502.
12. ↑ Henry Reichman: Review of: Jonathan Haslam: The Vices of Integrity: EH Carr, 1892–1982, London - New York 2000. H-Russia, H-Net Reviews, January 2002, accessed September 22, 2016.