Like many international relations scholars, we have always been fascinated by the First World War. Our own theoretical training in political science and our focus on interstate conflict initially led us each to think primarily about the implications of the war for theories of the causes of war. In the process, however, we have each come to take an increasing interest in the question of the causes of the First World War as a singular historical episode. Our respective interests were motivated by the fact that the war was probably the most consequential interstate conflict in modern history, and that it has had an enormous impact on the development of international relations theories. The continuing proliferation of interpretations about the origins of the war and the lack of consensus among historians after nearly a century has created a puzzle that is hard to ignore. Our interest, like that of other scholars, has grown as the centennial of the war approaches.

At the same time, during the last decade or so we have each been interacting more and more with historians at annual meetings of the International Studies Association, and at other, more specialized, conferences. We were aware that historians were planning numerous things to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the war, and began to think that we might do something as well, but in a way that provided a different perspective. We concluded that the most distinctive thing we might do would be to organize a conference and follow-up volume that brought together historians and political scientists. The aim was to reconsider some of the leading arguments about the causes of war within each discipline, expose political scientists to new archival research by historians, expose historians to new conceptual approaches in international relations theory, and to promote the ongoing collaboration between scholars in the two disciplines. Plans for a conference expanded into plans to set up additional panels at conventions.