Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 5 November 1982) was a British historian, international relations theorist, and fierce opponent of empiricism within historiography.

Carr was born in London to an middle-class family, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (diplomatic service) in 1916, resigning in 1936. In 1919, Carr was part of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and was involved in the drafting of the parts of the Treaty of Versailles. In the 1920s, Carr was assigned to the branch of the British Foreign Office that dealt with the League of Nations before being sent to the British Embassy in Riga, Latvia. During his time in Riga, Carr became increasing fascinated with Russian literature and culture and wrote several works on various aspects of Russian life.

In 1936, Carr became the Wilson Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, and is particularly known for his contribution on international relations theory. His famous work, The Twenty Years' Crisis was published in 1939. He later served as assistant editor of The Times from 1941 to 1946, during which time he was noted for his pro-Soviet leaders he wrote. He was a tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford from 1953 to 1955 when he became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Carr's writings include biographies of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1931), Karl Marx (1934), and Mikhail Bakunin (1937), as well as important studies on international relations and his History of Soviet Russia (14 vol., 1950–78). During World War Two, Carr was favorably impressed with what he regarded as the extraordinary heroic performance of the Soviet people, and towards the end of 1944 Carr decided to write a complete history of the Soviet Union from 1917 until the present comprising all aspects of social, political and economic history in order to explain how the Soviet Union withstood the challenge of the German invasion. The resulting work was his History of Soviet Russia. In Carr's view, Soviet history went through three periods in the inter-war era and was personified by the change of leadership from Vladimir Lenin to Joseph Stalin.

Carr is most famous today for his examination of historiography, What is History? (1961).

Work

• Dostoevsky (1821-1881): a New Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931.
• The Romantic Exiles: a Nineteenth Century Portrait Gallery, London: Victor Gollancz, 1933.
• Karl Marx: a Study in Fanaticism, London: Dent, 1934.
• Michael Bakunin, London: Macmillan, 1937.
• The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939: an Introduction to the Study of International Relations, London: Macmillan, 1939, revised edition, 1946.
• Conditions of Peace, London: Macmillan, 1942.
• Nationalism and After, London: Macmillan, 1945.
• A History of Soviet Russia, 14 volumes, London: Macmillan, 1950-1978.
• What is History?, 1961, revised edition edited by R.W. Davies, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
• The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929), London: Macmillan, 1979.
• From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980.
• The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935, London: Macmillan, 1982.

References

• Abramsky, C. & Williams, B.J. (editors) Essays In Honour of E.H. Carr, London: Macmillan, 1974.

• Davies, R.W. "Edward Hallett Carr, 1892-1982" pages 473-511 from Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 69, 1983.

• Deutscher, Tamara "E.H. Carr-a Personal Memoir" pages 78-86 from New Left Review, Issue #137, 1983.

• Haslam, Jonathan "We Need a Faith: E.H. Carr, 1892-1982" pages 36-39 from History Today, Volume 33, August 1983.

• Haslam, Jonathan "E.H. Carr and the History of Soviet Russia" pages 1021-1027 from Historical Journal, Volume 26, Issue #4, 1983.

• Howe, P. "The Utopian Realism of E.H. Carr" pages 277-297 from Review of International Studies, Volume 20, Issue #3, 1994.

• Labedz, Leopold "E.H. Carr: A Historian Overtaken by History" pages 94-111 from Survey March 1988 Volume 30 Issue # 1/2.
• Oldfield, A. "Moral Judgments in History" pages 260-277 from History and Theory, Volume 20, Issue #3, 1981.

• Trevor-Roper, Hugh "E.H. Carr's Success Story" pages 69-77 from Encounter, Volume 84, Issue #104, 1962.

External link

• The Vices of Integrity: E H Carr

The Papers of E H Carr are held at the University of Birmingham Special Collections

1892 births | 1982 deaths | British historians | Historiography | Historiosophy

E・H・カー | 愛德華·霍列特·卡爾