British Foreign Policy

An innovative study of the forces that shape the decisions of foreign policy leaders, this book examines the attitudes of British policy makers after World War II and considers their impact on foreign and economic policy. Blackwell analyzes the origins of the Foreign Office officials' traditional attitudes about Britain's preeminent position in international affairs and draws a distinction between the cognitive and affective components of these attitudes. Finding that Britain could no longer play a major part in influencing world events, yet unwilling to contemplate a more modest role, policymakers accommodated their attitudinal conflicts by seeking the illusion of power. The work should be of interest to those concerned with the implications for contemporary U.S. policy as well as to British historians.

Young looks at all the main phases of British foreign policy from the 1890s to the 1990s, paying particular attention to such major events as the Boer War, Appeasement, and the Suez Crisis. He also examines the impact of domestic change.

Why did Britain's position dramatically improve between 1739 and 1763? In this fascinating study, the author examines a pivotal period in Britain's rise to great power status that culminated in the defeat of France in the struggle for North America in the Seven Years's War. The central themes in this book are the choices between war and peace, and America or Europe. Due weight is given to the period of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), when British policy was far from successful and when the major theme was concern with European developments, and to the years of inter-War diplomacy, when the agenda was once again dominated by European developments, specifically the at tempt to create a continental system of collective security to offset the Franco-Prussian alliance. By focusing on the diplomacy of the period rather than, as with the majority of works, emphasizing the dominance of a struggle with France for colonial and maritime superiority, new light is thrown on British foreign policyin this period.

This book emphasizes the key role played by Britain in restoring peace and stability in central Europe after the First World War. It focuses on the endeavours of British diplomats in the 1920s to promote political integration and economic co-operation in the Danubia region. The work traces the gradual shift in British attitudes towards the small central European states, from one of active engagement to disinterest and even hostility. Three case studies of British foreign policy in Vienna, Budapest, and Prague support the novel thesis that British involvement in central European affairs was terminated as a result of Austrian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian unwillingness to co-operate, and not simply because of economic and political pressures from Germany.

Britain and the Last Tsar is a fundamental re-interpretation of British foreign and defense policy before the First World War. The currect orthodoxy asserts that the rise of an aggressive and powerful Germany forced Britain--a declining power--to abandon her traditional policy of avoiding alliances and to enter into alliance with Japan (1902), France (1904), and Russia (1907) in order to contain the German menace. In a controversial rejection of this theory, Keith Neilson argues that Britain was the pre-eminent world power in 1914 and that Russia, not Germany, was the principal long-term threat to Britain's global position. This original and important study shows that only by examining Anglo-Russian relations and eliminating an undue emphasis on Anglo-German affairs can an accurate picture of Britain's foreign and defense policy before 1914 be gained.