Inventing International Society is a narrative history of the English school of international relations. It argues that E. H. Carr should be accorded a central role in the formation of the school for the principal reason that he exerted an immense influence upon the development of international relations in Britain. After Carr departed from the scene in the late 1940s, Martin Wight became the most theoretically innovative scholar working within the discipline in the 1950s.

During this period, the diplomatic historian Herbert Butterfield became increasingly interested in a theoretical enquiry into the institutions of international society. Butterfield believed that this agenda needed to be addressed in a formal setting, hence his inauguration of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics in 1959. In addition to tracing the history of the English school, this book argues that the work of scholars such as Hedley Bull and R. J.

Vincent have made a significant contribution to the new normative agenda in international relations.