VII. Grey, Hardinge and the Foreign Office, 1906–1910

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zara Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Registration System ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Actual Formation

Sir Edward Grey entered the Foreign Office at a time when it was being rapidly transformed. A change in the registration system had freed the junior officials from most routine operations and encouraged the senior men to take a more active part in the actual formation of foreign policy. At the same time, a new group of men took over the most important departmental positions and entered the chief European embassies. For the most part, these men were far more conscious of German power than their predecessors and set the tone of British policy during the first years of Grey's Foreign Secretaryship. Charles Hardinge, Louis Mallet, William Tyrrell and Eyre Crowe in London, Francis Bertie, ambassador in Paris, Arthur Nicolson in St Petersburg and, after 1907, Goschen in Berlin were all to play important roles in shaping the new course.

British Policy in the Far East 1933–1936: Treasury and Foreign Office

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Far East ◽  
The Far East ◽  
Currency Reform ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Technical Considerations

The nature of British interests in the Far East in the 1930s meant that both the Treasury and the Board of Trade were necessarily closely involved with the making of foreign policy. While Foreign Office officials resented this intrusion into their domain, they were themselves disdainful of so-called ‘technical’ considerations connected with tariffs or currency reform, and were willing to leave them to the specialists. Under the dynamic impetus of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, and the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Warren Fisher, the Treasury, encouraged by the apparent abnegation of the Foreign Office, made a bold and aggressive foray between 1933 and 1936 into realms of foreign policy-making hitherto regarded as the exclusive sphere of the professional diplomat.

V. The Principles and Methods of Lord Salisbury's Foreign Policy

1935 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Lillian M. Penson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Consistent System ◽  
First Case ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Many ◽  
At Home

“Ce clergyman laïque, obstiné et maladroit”, so Bismarck spoke of Salisbury to the French Ambassador in 1879, contrasting him with Beaconsfield, whom he thought a man of broader outlook; and we have Salisbury's testimony to Bismarck's “extraordinary penetration”. Yet, among the many difficulties that hamper an attempt to analyse the policy of Salisbury, perhaps the greatest is that there are few subjects on which he was consistent. He made almost a principle of inconsistency. “This country”, he said, “which is popularly governed, and cannot therefore be counted on to act on any uniform or consistent system of policy….” This was in April 1878 at the beginning of his first term at the Foreign Office. As so often happens circumstances strengthened his belief. His early tenures of the Foreign Secretaryship were short, and divided by a Liberal administration whose actions materially affected British policy. The whole period was crowded by movements abroad and at home which compelled adjustments of ideas. Twice, at any rate, he had not a free hand, in 1878–80 and again in 1886, for in the first case he had to reckon with Disraeli and in the other with a divided Cabinet.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asle Toje
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Present State ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
British Foreign Office ◽  
German Parliament

We do not want to place anyone into the shadow, we also claim our place in the sun.” In a foreign policy debate in the German parliament on December 6. 1897 the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Bernhard von Bülow, articulated the foreign policy aspirations of the ascendant Wilhelmine Germany. This proved easier said than done. In 1907, Eyre Crowe of the British Foreign Office penned his famous memorandum where he accounted for “the present state of British relations with France and Germany.” He concluded that Britain should meet imperial Germany with “unvarying courtesy and consideration” while maintaining “the most unbending determination to uphold British rights and interests in every part of the globe.”...

IV. Baron von Holstein, The “Mystery Man” of the German Foreign Office 1890–1906

1923 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-84
Author(s):  
G. P. Gooch
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Foreign Office

Though historians are still waiting for Holstein's papers, enough material has accumulated since his death in 1909 to attempt a sketch of the man who had the largest share in the control of German foreign policy from the fall of Bismarck in 1890 till his own retirement in 1906. During his lifetime his name was scarcely known even to his countrymen; but the Memoirs of his colleagues Otto Hammann and Baron von Eckardstein, to mention only the two principal witnesses, have thrown a flood of light on the Éminence Grise of modern Germany, who, like Père Joseph, loved to work in the dark and preferred the reality to the pomp of power.

Engaging with Public Opinion at the Micro-Level: Citizen Dialogue and Participation in German Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Opitz ◽  
Hanna Pfeifer ◽  
Anna Geis
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
German Foreign Policy ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Auswärtiges Amt ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Western Democracies

Abstract This article analyzes how and why foreign policy (FP)-makers use dialogue and participation processes (DPPs) with (groups of) individual citizens as a source of public opinion. Taking Germany as a case study and drawing on DPP initiatives by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) since 2014, we analyze the officials’ motivation for establishing such processes and find four different sets of motivation: (1) image campaigning, (2) educating citizens, (3) listening to citizens, and (4) changing the citizens’ role in FP. Our article makes three contributions. First, we provide a novel typology of the sources of public opinion upon which FP-makers can draw. Second, our study points to the importance of, and provides a framework for, analyzing how officials engage with public opinion at the micro-level, which has so far been understudied in FP analysis. Finally, our empirical analysis suggests that both carefully assessing and influencing public opinion feature prominently in motivation, whereas PR purposes are of minor importance. Recasting the citizens’ role in FP gains in importance over time and may mirror the increased need to legitimize FP in Western democracies vis-à-vis their publics.

The Manchuria Bridgehead: Anglo-Russian Rivalry and the Imperial Railways of North China, 1897—1902

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
North China ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Degree Of Protection ◽  
British Trade ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese Empire

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 committed Great Britain to the defense of Manchuria, an area of the Chinese Empire which the Foreign Office and Cabinet never had considered to be vital to Britain's strategic or commercial interests. In the years preceding the alliance, British policy in Manchuria was weak and indecisive. The government consistently refused to run the risk of war and was genuinely concerned about the unacceptable level of tension generated by half-hearted attempts to maintain some semblance of the open door. Successive attempts to negotiate a diplomatic settlement that would provide a degree of protection for British trade while acknowledging Russia's special political and economic rights were wrecked by the uncompromising views of Sergie Witte. Under these circumstances, it was only natural that Britain should give serious thought to abandoning Manchuria.

The Owl of Minerva Flies Only at Dusk?

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-563
Author(s):  
Josip Glaurdić
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
The West ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Run Up ◽  
British Foreign Office ◽  
High Level

Could the Western foreign policy makers have done anything to prevent the violence accompanying the breakup of Yugoslavia? The answer to that question largely depends on their level of awareness of what was happening in the South Slavic federation in the run-up to war. This article analyzes a string of newly declassified documents of the British Foreign Office related to the February 1991 visit of a high-level British political delegation to Yugoslavia, together with interviews with some of the meetings’ protagonists. These declassified documents and interviews offer a unique snapshot in the development of the Yugoslav crisis and Britain’s policy in the region. They give us a clear picture of the goals and strategies of the principal Yugoslav players and show us what the West knew about the true nature of the Yugoslav crisis and when. The article’s conclusions are clear. Yugoslavia’s breakup and impending violence did not require great foresight. Their cause was known well in advance because it was preannounced—it was the plan of the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević to impose a centralized Yugoslavia upon the other republics or, if that failed, to use force to create a Greater Serbia on Yugoslavia’s ruins. Crucially, British policy at the time did nothing to dissuade Milošević from his plan and likely contributed to his confidence in using violence to pursue the creation of a new and enlarged Serbian state.

Some aspects of the Anglo-Russian Convention and its working in Persia, 1907–14—I

1968 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rose Louise Greaves
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
European Policy ◽  
Consecutive Period ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Permanent Staff ◽  
The Government ◽  
Role Of The Government

The Anglo-Russian Convention, signed at St. Petersburg on 31 August 1907, contained provisions relating to Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The text of the agreement would seem to suggest that the matters adjusted were purely local in character—an arrangement arrived at between two countries settling problems in far-away frontier regions. But the Anglo-Russian Convention was of much greater significance. It represented a change not only in Anglo-Russian relations, but in Britain's fundamental European policy. It also meant that the role of the Government of India, which had often been a powerful factor in the determination of foreign policy in the nineteenth century, became less significant. It seems highly probable, too, that in the years when Sir Edward Grey was Foreign Secretary (December 1905 to December 1916—holding office for a longer consecutive period than any other Foreign Secretary in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, the next being Castlereagh, 1812–22) the permanent staff of the Foreign Office exercised more influence and had a more decisive voice in the conduct of the country's foreign policy than they ever had before of have had since.

The Formation of the Foreign Office Economic Relations Section, 1930–1937

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Graeme Boadle
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Nationalism ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Economic Information ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Economic Work ◽  
Far Eastern

In December 1930 Sir Victor Wellesley, the deputy under secretary at the Foreign Office, and its expert on Far Eastern finance, circulated a 29-page ‘Proposal for the establishment of a Politico-Economic Intelligence Department in the Foreign Office.’ This memorandum was prompted by the growing importance of tariffs, and various forms of investment, as instruments of foreign policy, and concern at his colleagues' failure to understand the political consequences. With economic nationalism in the ascendant, Wellesley recognized that Britain soon would have to consider whether she would ‘take part in the scramble for economic hegemony’. He hoped Cabinet would decide against tariffs and imperial preference, but was worried that the Foreign Office would be ill-equipped to defend this viewpoint. It was not that the Office lacked adequate sources of economic information, but rather that the division of duties between the Department of Overseas Trade and the Foreign Office precluded their assimilation with political appreciations. Although seventy five per cent of the work of the average mission was economic or commercial, this was generally left to the commercial counsellor, who reported directly to the Department of Overseas Trade. Political dispatches were forwarded to the appropriate Foreign Office department and there examined in virtual isolation. Moreover, the dominant attitude of mind among senior diplomats was, if not actually predisposed against economic work, at least so lacking in understanding that their efforts were often misdirected.

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