Grand-Strategic Thinking in History

2021 ◽  
pp. 636-653
Author(s):  
John Bew ◽  
Maeve Ryan ◽  
Andrew Ehrhardt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Soft Landing ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Second World

Something that is recognizably and consciously “grand strategic” emerges in British political and foreign policy debates from the late nineteenth century onwards, but this chapter argues that certain grand-strategic assumptions were present even earlier in the century. A clearly identifiable British grand-strategic rationale—an understanding of the country’s “place in the world”—emerged out of the Napoleonic Wars and developed across the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, this grand-strategic thinking was key to the “soft landing” Britain sought to engineer in the aftermath of the Second World War as its position began to contract rapidly and radically from a world power into a Continental power. The examples discussed here are Lord Castlereagh, George Canning, and Viscount Palmerston in the nineteenth century; and several Foreign Office officials in the twentieth, but most notably Gladwyn Jebb. In its early incarnations, grand strategy is better thought of not as a process (leading to the production of plans) but as a habit of mind: a conscious attempt to look beyond the confines of short-term requirements of national defense or immediate foreign policy dilemmas.

scholarly journals The Westphalian model and sovereign equality

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 641-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER M. R. STIRK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
Normative Principle ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Second World

AbstractAlthough the Westphalian model takes many forms the association of Westphalian and sovereign equality is a prominent one. This article argues firstly that sovereign equality was not present as a normative principle at Westphalia. It argues further that while arguments for sovereign equality were present in the eighteenth century they did not rely on, or even suggest, a Westphalian provenance. It was, for good reasons, not until the late nineteenth century that the linkages of Westphalia and sovereign equality became commonplace, and even then sovereign equality and its linkage with Westphalia were disputed. It was not until after the Second World War, notably through the influential work of Leo Gross that the linkage of Westphalia and sovereign equality became not only widely accepted, but almost undisputed until quite recently. The article concludes by suggesting that not only did Gross bequeath a dubious historiography but that this historiography is an impediment to contemporary International Relations.

scholarly journals Racial Integration, White Appropriation, and School Choice: The Demise of the Colored Schools of Late Nineteenth Century Brooklyn

2020 ◽  
pp. 009614422093322
Author(s):  
Judith Kafka ◽  
Cici Matheny
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
School Choice ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Schools ◽  
White Families ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Enrollment Data

This study examines school desegregation in late-nineteenth-century Brooklyn from a spatial perspective, analyzing enrollment data and policy debates within the context of the shifting racial and geographic contours of the city. We argue that “choice” on the part of black families only partially explains the demise of designated-black schools during this period. White interests also played a role in the closing of these institutions, as white families and developers sought, and ultimately acquired, control over formerly black spaces. This study contributes to a growing body of research on school desegregation in northern U.S. cities by exploring the perceived benefits of school desegregation for white families and property owners, and by examining how the end of official school segregation may have helped to shape the racial contours of nineteenth-century urban development.

The German and Japanese Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 1123-1160
Author(s):  
Daniel Hedinger ◽  
Moritz von Brescius
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World Order ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Shared History ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Second World

This chapter provides an analytical overview of the German and Japanese imperial projects from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II. It shows how Germany and Japan—two imperial latecomers in the late nineteenth century—redefined imperialism and colonialism in the first half of the twentieth century. In order to realize their dreams of a new imperial world order, both countries broke with what had come before, and their violent imperial projects turned out to be radically new and different. While Europe had never seen an empire like Hitler’s, the same is true of East Asia and the so-called Co-Prosperity Sphere during the Second World War. In the end, it was their wars for empire and brutal legacies that not only profoundly shaped their respective national histories, but also undermined the legitimacy of imperialism after 1945. The chapter, which focuses on a series of important moments from a trans-imperial perspective, highlights two points. First, it stresses that the German and Japanese empires had a shared history. Second, it shows that by their emergence as colonial powers, Japan and Germany first fundamentally challenged and later changed the very rules of the “imperial game” and the existing global order. Their histories are central to understand great power competition in the first half of the 20th century as well as the imperial nature of the World Wars.

‘Business Imperialism’ and Argentina, 1875–1900: A Theoretical Note

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Economic Advantage ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
South American ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
British State

The facts are by now sufficiently clear for it to be common ground in any discussion of late nineteenth-century imperialism that the British State was disinclined to interfere on behalf of British capitalists with Latin American interests when these were threatened by local firms or States. Equally it is clear that British capitalists did not invest in Argentina in the belief that, by so doing, they were actively assisting the foreign policy of the British State. The State provided no grounds for this belief and no inducement to invest, and had it done so it is unlikely that the capitalists concerned – a pretty liberal bunch by and large – would have responded to any greater extent than they felt was consistent with their economic advantage. Again, there were not, in Britain, territorially ambitious militarists and aristocrats with their sights set on the South American republics. This element was quite adequately catered for in the Empire. In short, the models of imperialism favoured by Hobson, Schumpeter, and other conspiracy theorists, however appropriate they may be in particular cases, cannot be generalized and have very little relevance to Argentina.

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 British Admiralty Records as a Source for African History

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 161-175
Author(s):  
Melvin Hendrix
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Objectives ◽  
Tropical Areas ◽  
The One

What is more characteristically English than the Navy?The relationship between naval power and British sovereignty is one of long standing in British foreign policy. This was especially evident in the nineteenth century, when Britain achieved almost unchallenged global naval pre-eminence following the Napoleonic Wars, keeping order in a world that British commercial interests were creating. As a consequence, the traditional role of the navy as a national defense force was changing dramatically to that of an international policeman on the one hand and surrogate statesman on the other. These two roles were generally most pronounced in the emerging tropical areas of trade in Asia, Africa, and South America.It is in relation to Africa that this essay is concerned, and over the course of the nineteenth century, the influence of the Royal Navy on African societies was an evolving, but considerable, force--as surveyor, policeman, employer, ally, adversary, diplomat, and enforcer. On the whole, Britain's Africa policy throughout much of the century was based on the suppression of the slave trade, while simultaneously providing protection for British citizens promoting “legitimate” commercial interests.Since the trade in slaves from Africa was chiefly a maritime enterprise, its navy became the chief instrument for implementing these foreign policy objectives, a role that shifted in the second half of the century to a more direct imperialist posture.

The Supernatural and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Kurlander
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Third ◽  
Practical Evaluation ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Second World

This chapter evaluates the influence of the supernatural imaginary on the Third Reich's conception of foreign policy, investment in fanciful weaponry, and use of astrology, divination, clairvoyance, and telepathy in prosecuting the war. The Second World War was neither caused nor directed primarily by occult designs. However, many aspects of the war were influenced or determined by folklore, border science, and the broader Nazi supernatural imaginary. Rather than rely on a practical evaluation of risks and rewards, Hitler frequently tapped into his own intuition in making foreign-policy decisions and appealed to the German people's collective unconscious in selling his aggressive policies. Abetting Hitler's faith-based foreign policy, the Propaganda Ministry and Foreign Office employed professional astrologers and diviners to produce wartime propaganda aimed at both the Allies and the German public. Finally, the Third Reich utilized occultism and border science to gather military intelligence, search for enemy battleships, and train Nazi soldiers.

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