Edward Hallett Carr (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was a British English historian, diplomat, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography. Carr was best known for A History of Soviet Russia, a 14-volume history of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1929, for his writings on international relations, particularly The Twenty Years' Crisis, and for his book What Is History? in which he laid out historiographical principles rejecting traditional historical methods and practices.
Educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, Carr began his career as a diplomat in 1916 and in 1919 he participated in the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the British delegation. Becoming increasingly preoccupied with the study of international relations and of the Soviet Union, he resigned from the Foreign Office in 1936 to begin an academic career. From 1941 to 1946, Carr worked as an assistant editor at The Times, where he was noted for his leaders (editorials) urging a socialist system and an Anglo-Soviet alliance as the basis of a post-war order.
Early life Carr was born in London to a middle-class family, and was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School in London and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a first class degree in classics in 1916.Hughes-Warrington, p. 24 Carr's family had originated in northern England, and the first mention of his ancestors was a George Carr who served as the Sheriff of Newcastle in 1450. Carr's parents were Francis Parker and Jesse (née Hallet) Carr.Davies, "Edward Hallett Carr", p. 475 They were initially Conservatives, but went over to supporting the Liberals in 1903 over the issue of free trade. When Joseph Chamberlain proclaimed his opposition to free trade and announced in favour of Imperial Preference, Carr's father, to whom all tariffs were abhorrent, switched his political loyalties.
Carr described the atmosphere at the Merchant Taylors School: "95% of my school fellows came from orthodox Conservative homes, and regarded Lloyd George as an incarnation of the devil. We Liberals were a tiny despised minority."Davies, "Edward Hallett Carr", p. 476 From his parents, Carr inherited a strong belief in progress as an unstoppable force in world affairs, and throughout his life a recurring theme in Carr's thinking was that the world was progressively becoming a better place.Haslam, "We Need a Faith", p. 36 In 1911, Carr won the Craven Scholarship to attend Trinity College at Cambridge. At Cambridge, Carr was much impressed by hearing one of his professors lecture on how the Greco-Persian Wars influenced Herodotus in the writing of the Histories.Haslam, "We Need a Faith", p. 39 Carr found this to be a great discovery—the subjectivity of the historian's craft. This discovery was later to influence his 1961 book What Is History?
Diplomatic career Like many of his generation, Carr found the First World War to be a shattering experience as it destroyed the world he had known before 1914. He joined the British Foreign Office in 1916, resigning in 1936. Carr was excused from military service for medical reasons. He was initially assigned to the Contraband Department of the Foreign Office, which sought to enforce the blockade on Germany, and then in 1917 was assigned to the Northern Department, which amongst other areas dealt with relations with Russia. As a diplomat, Carr was later praised by the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax as someone who had "distinguished himself not only by sound learning and political understanding, but also in administrative ability".
At first, Carr knew nothing about the Bolsheviks. He later recalled of having some "vague impression of the revolutionary views of Lenin and Trotsky" but of knowing nothing of Marxism.Davies, "Edward Hallett Carr", p. 477 By 1919, Carr had become convinced that the Bolsheviks were destined to win the Russian Civil War, and approved of the Prime Minister David Lloyd George's opposition to the anti-Bolshevik ideas of the War Secretary Winston Churchill on the grounds of realpolitik. He later wrote that in the spring of 1919 he "was disappointed when he [Lloyd George] gave way (in part) on the Russian question in order to buy French consent to concessions to Germany".Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 30 In 1919, Carr was part of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and was involved in the drafting of parts of the Treaty of Versailles relating to the League of Nations. During the conference, Carr was much offended at the Allied, especially French, treatment of the Germans, writing that the German delegation at the peace conference were "cheated over the 'Fourteen Points', and subjected to every petty humiliation".
Beside working on the sections of the Versailles treaty relating to the League of Nations, Carr was also involved in working out the borders between Germany and Poland. Initially, Carr favoured Poland, urging in a memo in February 1919 that Britain recognise Poland at once, and that the German city of Danzig (modern Gdańsk, Poland) be ceded to Poland.Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 28 In March 1919, Carr fought against the idea of a Minorities Treaty for Poland, arguing that the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in Poland would be best guaranteed by not involving the international community in Polish internal affairs.Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 27 By the spring of 1919, Carr's relations with the Polish delegation had declined to a state of mutual hostility.Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 29 Carr's tendency to favour the claims of the Germans at the expense of the Poles led British-Polish historian Adam Zamoyski to note that Carr "held views of the most extraordinary racial arrogance on all of the nations of Eastern Europe".Zamoyski, Adam The Polish Way, London: John Murray, 1989 p. 335 Carr's biographer, Jonathan Haslam, wrote that Carr grew up in a place where German culture was deeply appreciated, which in turn always coloured his views towards Germany throughout his life.Haslam, "E.H. Carr's Search for Meaning" pp. 21–35 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, Palgrave: London, 2000 p. 27 As a result, Carr supported the territorial claims of fledgling Weimar Germany against Poland. In a letter written in 1954 to his friend Isaac Deutscher, Carr described his attitude to Poland at the time: "The picture of Poland that was universal in Eastern Europe right down to 1925 was of a strong and potentially predatory power."
After the peace conference, Carr was stationed at the British Embassy in Paris until 1921, and in 1920 was awarded a CBE. At first, Carr had great faith in the League, which he believed would prevent both another world war and ensure a better post-war world. 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, where he served as Second Secretary between 1925 and 1929. In 1925, Carr married Anne Ward Howe, by whom he had one son.Cobb, Adam "Carr, E.H." pp. 180–181 from The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Volume 1, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999 p. 180 During his time in Riga (which at that time possessed a substantial Russian émigré community), Carr became increasingly fascinated with Russian literature and culture and wrote several works on various aspects of Russian life. Carr learnt Russian during his time in Riga, to read Russian writers in the original.Haslam, "We Need a Faith", pp. 36–37 In 1927, Carr paid his first visit to Moscow. He was later to write that reading Alexander Herzen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the work of other 19th-century Russian intellectuals caused him to re-think his liberal views.
Starting in 1929, Carr began to review books relating to all things Russian and Soviet and to international relations in several British literary journals and, towards the end of his life, in the London Review of Books. In particular, Carr emerged as the Times Literary Supplement'''s Soviet expert in the early 1930s, a position he still held at the time of his death in 1982.Mount, Ferdinand Communism A TLS Companion, University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 321 Because of his status as a diplomat (until 1936), most of Carr's reviews in the period 1929–36 were published either anonymously or under the pseudonym "John Hallett". In the summer of 1929, Carr began work on a biography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and, in the course of researching Dostoevsky's life, Carr befriended Prince D. S. Mirsky, a Russian émigré scholar living at that time in Britain.Haslam, The Vices of Integrity p. 41-42 Beside studies on international relations, Carr's writings in the 1930s included biographies of Dostoyevsky (1931), Karl Marx (1934), and Mikhail Bakunin (1937). An early sign of Carr's increasing admiration of the Soviet Union was a 1929 review of Baron Pyotr Wrangel's memoirs.Davies, R.W. "Carr's Changing Views of the Soviet Union" pp. 91–108 from E.H. Carr A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 95
In an article entitled "Age of Reason" published in the Spectator on 26 April 1930, Carr attacked what he regarded as the prevailing culture of pessimism within the West, which he blamed on the French writer Marcel Proust.Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 47 In the early 1930s, Carr found the Great Depression to be almost as profoundly shocking as the First World War.Haslam, "We Need a Faith", p. 37 Further increasing Carr's interest in a replacement ideology for liberalism was his reaction to hearing the debates in January 1931 at the General Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and especially the speeches on the merits of free trade between the Yugoslav Foreign Minister Vojislav Marinkovich and the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson.Davies, "Edward Hallett Carr", p. 481 It was at this time that Carr started to admire the Soviet Union. In a 1932 book review of Lancelot Lawton's Economic History of Soviet Russia, Carr dismissed Lawton's claim that the Soviet economy was a failure, and praised the British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb's extremely favourable assessment of the Soviet economy.Davies, R.W. "Carr's Changing Views of the Soviet Union" pp. 91–108 from E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal ed. Michael Cox, London: Palgrave, 2000 p. 98