Historians today generally use the term 'appeasement' to characterize
the attempts of British governments in the 1930s, and above all the admin-
istration of Neville Chamberlain ( 1937-40), to preserve world peace at a
time of deepening international crisis. Appeasement has been seen at least
in its European context ¹ as a diplomatic initiative whose fundamental pur-
pose was to accommodate German territorial and economic grievances
arising from the Versailles Treaty. It has therefore been the practice
of most commentators on the subject to treat it as an aspect of inter-
war British foreign policy. Representative texts, drawing on published
and unpublished collections of private and official British and German
archives, are A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War ( 1961);
Ian Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet ( 1971); Keith Middlemas, Diplomacy
of Illusion ( 1972); Simon Newman, March 1939: The British Guarantee to
Poland ( 1976); Andrew Crozier, Appeasement and Germany's Bid for Colon-
ies ( 1988); and Richard Lamb, The Drift to War 1922-1939 ( 1989). The
most substantial recent volume in this tradition is D. C. Watt How War
Came ( 1989). Here Anglo-German relations are discussed as one, albeit
critically important, aspect of a mounting international crisis simultan-
eously viewed from the perspectives of contemporary civil servants and
politicians in Moscow, Paris, Rome, Warsaw, and Washington DC.

There have been alternative approaches, particularly since the early
1970s, but these have been fairly limited in number. Thus, J. A. Gallagher
explored appeasement as a facet of Imperial strategy in The Decline, Rise
and Fall of the British Empire ( 1982). He argued that in the 1930s Brit-
ish governments sought to reduce the level of tension in Europe so that
they could retain the freedom (and the resources) to contain the escalat-
ing diplomatic and military challenge presented by Japan in East Asia.

(Unless otherwise stated, place of publication is London for all titles.)

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