Robert James Martin Wight was one of the foremost British scholars of international relations in the twentieth century, and one of the most profound thinkers on international theory of his generation.
18 Facts About Martin Wight
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Martin Wight was a teacher of some renown at both the London School of Economics and the University of Sussex, where he served as the founding Dean of European Studies.
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Martin Wight's work, along with that of the Australian philosopher John Anderson, was a lasting influence upon the thought of Hedley Bull, author of one of the most widely read texts on the nature of international politics, The Anarchical Society.
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Martin Wight was born on 26 November 1913 in Brighton, Sussex.
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Martin Wight attended Bradfield College and in 1931 went to Hertford College, Oxford, to read modern history.
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Martin Wight took a first-class honours degree and stayed at Oxford for a short period afterwards engaged in postgraduate research.
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In 1937 Martin Wight joined the staff of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
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In 1938, Martin Wight left Chatham House and took a job as a History Master at Haileybury.
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Two years later his position at the school became untenable: having been called up for military service, Martin Wight chose to register as a conscientious objector, and one condition of the tribunal's acceptance of his application was that he ceased to teach.
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Martin Wight published three books on this topic: The Development of the Legislative Council, The Gold Coast Legislative Council and British Colonial Constitutions.
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In 1946, Martin Wight was recruited by David Astor, then editor of The Observer to act as the newspaper's diplomatic correspondent at the inaugural sessions of the United Nations at Lake Success.
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In 1947, Martin Wight went back again at Chatham House, collaborating with Toynbee on the production of the Surveys of International Affairs covering the war-years and contributing to his A Study of History.
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Ironically, these lectures were first delivered in the United States, at the University of Chicago, where Martin Wight spent a term in 1957.
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In 1959, Martin Wight was invited by the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield to join the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, a group initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.
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In 1960, Martin Wight left the LSE to become the founding Dean of European Studies and Professor of History at the new University of Sussex.
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Martin Wight's teaching at the LSE in the 1950s is often seen to have been a strong influence on the direction of international studies in Britain; his posthumously published essays have clearly served as a major stimulus to the revival of the 'English school' in the 1990s.
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Michael Nicholson says that in the 'English School' of scholars of international relations, Martin Wight is held in especially high esteem.
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Martin Wight wrote many reviews, mainly for The Observer and International Affairs, but his main works are as follows:.