It will be seen that the history of thought about world society includes a steady movement away from relations between states to broader considerations. Diplomatic history is a narrower study than a study of values and motivations, though one leads to the other.

‘International Relations’ or ‘world society’

It is because of the past preoccupation with relations between nations that ‘International Relations’ is the title that is usually given to the discipline concerned with the study of world politics and world society. It is an unfortunate title for our present purposes. States sometimes comprise different national groups, such as English, Irish, Scots and Welsh in the state of the United Kingdom. If we were concerned only with relations among the 150 or so independent political units of today, ‘inter-state’ would be a more appropriate term than ‘inter-national’ relations. The general idea that most of us have of world society is one that is based on maps of the world which emphasize state boundaries, on historical studies which concentrate on relations among governments. We are familiar with a set of national symbols, customs and institutions that make us feel different from peoples in other states. For this reason we think about world affairs as though they were confined to relations between states. But the study of world society is not confined to relations among states or state authorities.