J. A. Hobson was a writer, journalist, lecturer, political activist, and propagandist for a group of left liberals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While he is justly famous in the discipline of international relations for originating the theory of imperialism subsequently adopted by Lenin, his contribution to thinking on international relations is much wider and more profound than this single aspect suggests. Hobson's writing on international affairs in fact constitutes a significant modification of the tenets of earlier liberal international theory. He developed a new liberal internationalist framework that laid the bases for much of the subsequent liberal thinking on international relations and organisation since the Second World War. Concentrating in the main on Hobson's writings on international relations, this study explores the theoretical structure of, and tensions in, Hobson's international theory; his critical analysis of, and concrete proposals for, contemporary international relations; and the social, political and economic theory that underlies his approach to international relations.

Hobson created a framework for analysing international relations that is a modification of traditional nineteenth-century liberal internationalism. His development of a new liberal internationalism, as I shall call it, entails the application of his theory of co-operative surplus beyond the boundaries of national societies and of his idea of an organic unity to international relations and the world economy.