Elizabethan Foreign Policy in Microcosm: The Portuguese Pretender, 1580–89

1973 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-210
Author(s):  
Gordon K. McBride
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Apparent Inconsistency ◽  
International Events

Among the numerous preoccupations of historians one of the most persistent concerns the political and diplomatic skill of England's Elizabeth I. From the two extremes of James Anthony Froude and Elizabeth Jenkins through the judicious work of J. E. Neale, scholars have long been frustrated by the English queen's apparent inconsistency, though dazzled by the brilliance of her reign. The result is a plethora of argument. It is the attempt here to illuminate Elizabethan foreign policy by isolating one minor aspect of it: the career of the Portuguese Pretender, Don Antonio. Hopefully the result will be a slightly clearer perception of that most illusive lady.It can be asserted that two interests went to the very heart of foreign affairs in the reign of Elizabeth I: the encouragement of English maritime expansion and the resolve to keep the Netherlands from absolute domination by a major continental state. The maelstrom of international events in the second half of the sixteenth century placed both of these policies in stark juxtaposition to the interests of Spain, the greatest state of the age and the spear's tip of the militant Counter-Reformation.By 1580 Anglo-Spanish relations had suffered a steady deterioration for two decades. The might of Philip II of Spain appeared boundless. Then in that year Philip's power grew perceptibly greater by the acquisition of the Portuguese throne, the significance of which did not escape the English. Had it not been for a persistent rival-Don Antonio, the Prior of Crato—King Philip might have conquered an old and respected kingdom with no more effort than it took to lace his boots.

scholarly journals Turkey’s “Zero Problems with the Neighbors” Policy: Was It Realistic?

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Askerov
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
National Interests ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Government ◽  
Economic Developments

With the advancement of power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has introduced revolutionary policies in Turkey in various realms, including foreign affairs. The new trend in the foreign policy focused on not having problems with neighbors. This could be possible or nearly possible theoretically but eliminating century-long and deep-rooted conflicts with some of the neighbors would not be easy in practice. The new idealistic/moralistic approach necessitated new ways of policy formulation based on mutual gains and unthinkable concessions on the part of Turkey. Ankara’s new approach had given a special importance to building bridges of trust with the neighbors, which also seemed attractive to the political leaders of the neighboring states. This idealistic/moralistic approach was vulnerable to the dynamic political and economic developments in the region and the world in general. The policy did not have a power of sustainability due to the various old, new, and emerging problems around Turkey and hence, the government had to give it up gradually and take a new course of foreign policy based on realistic approaches to defend its national interests.

From Pigmentocracy to Representocracy

2018 ◽  
pp. 203-260
Author(s):  
Vineet Thakur
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
Institutional Structures

This chapter traces the post-apartheid transformation of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in South Africa. It argues that in the first decade of transition, the Department remained preoccupied with the process of internal restructuring, which was successfully achieved. This caused structural pains as many of the old white diplomats left the service, robbing the Department of crucial expertise. In these years, the political leadership played a stronger role in the South African foreign policymaking. While Mandela’s foreign policy formulation was ad-hocist, Mbeki relied on institutional structures. However, rather than emphasizing on strengthening the DFA, he created new institutional structures under his integrated governance scheme which, ironically, further centralised foreign policymaking. Consequently, the DFA was further marginalized.

Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 737-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Marie Blum ◽  
Christopher Sebastian Parker
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
The Political ◽  
Threat Model ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

President Trump is often at odds with the conservative establishment over a range of issues, not least of which is foreign policy. Yet it remains unclear whether supporting “Trumpism” is commensurate with coherent foreign policy views that are distinct from conventionally conservative positions. We evaluate whether the foreign policy views of Trump’s supporters, both in the voting public and among activists, differ from those of other Republicans. We use the 2016 ANES to examine Republican primary voters and the new 2016 State Convention Delegate Study to assess Republican activists. In doing so, we reveal systematic differences in foreign policy preferences between Trump supporters and more establishment conservatives. We demonstrate that the status-threat model need not be confined to domestic politics. Indeed, it may be extended to explain foreign policy preferences on the political right, that of Trump’s supporters in the present case. In doing so, we also find evidence that status threat may well be the source of fracture in the Republican Party.

The 1927 Soviet War Scare: The Foreign Affairs-Domestic Policy Nexus Revisited

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Relations Of Power

The Soviet War Scare of 1927 is usually treated solely within the bounds of Soviet political machinations. This study explores the connection between Bolshevik domestic and foreign policy in the War Scare of 1927 with a focus on the peasants. The peasants in the early years of the NEP were seeking a compromise with the regime, seeing the relations of power following the war, the civil war, and horrendous famine of 1921-1922, not in their favor. The War Scare of 1927 altered how both the peasants and the regime saw one another and the possibility of compromise. The rumors of war were soon coupled with threats of peasants uprising against the communists. By fall 1927, both the local police in their svodki and the central OGPU in its summary reports to the political leadership were describing a mounting confrontational atmosphere among the peasants. Given the heightened anxieties within the leadership regarding the Soviet Union’s ability to defend itself, concern over the reliability of the peasantry and a demand to know more fully about the “political situation in the countryside” had reached a fever pitch. Surveiling the countryside, both the central OGPU and the party leadership concluded, not without some evidence, that a growing number of peasants desired a showdown. The War Scare of 1927 added significantly to the factors that helped set the process of collectivization in motion.

scholarly journals The Visit of Envoy Osip Nepeya to England (1556–1557): Success or Failure of Russian Diplomacy?

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-147
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Kiselev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Military Support ◽  
Mary Tudor ◽  
The Military

Introduction. The visit of the Russian envoy Osip Nepeya to London in 1556–1557 is usually considered as the beginning of the official relations between Russia and England. In the light of modern views about the sixteenth-century diplomacy, this event requires a more thorough research. Methods. The Nepeya’s trip was traditionally viewed as an insignificant episode in the context of general reviews of bilateral relations concentrated mainly on trade. The reasons and possibilities of the military and political rapprochement between England, Spain and Russia in the 1550s, which was the most likely goal of the Nepeya’s journey to England, have never been investigated. Therefore, this article is based on an analysis of numerous multilingual sources. Analysis. The author clarifies the Nepeya’s diplomatic rank and certain previously unknown details of the Muscovites’ stay in London. He analyzes Nepeya’s mission to England in the context of foreign affairs of Ivan IV, Mary Tudor and Philip II Habsburg. Results. It is concluded that the rulers of Spain and England could provide military support to Ivan IV, but they were not interested in military and political alliance with the Muscovy and the war against Turkey. However, establishing official equal relations between England and Russia at the highest level, as well as obtaining trade privileges for Russian merchants was the main result of Nepeya’s trip. This allows us to conclude that the first Russian diplomatic mission in London was successful.

Philip II and the Papacy

1961 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Catholic Religion

The view that Philip II was the secular arm of the Counter-Reformation still survives. It is based on the assumption that his own words and claims must be taken at their face value, and on the fallacy that because the religious motive was sometimes present in Spanish policy, therefore it was always present and was the most important motive. The popes he had to deal with took a different view. They considered that Philip II, like his predecessors, used his prestige as a Catholic sovereign to pursue objectives that were essentially political. A characteristic summary of the papal view of Philip II's foreign policy was given in 1589 with reference to his ambitions in France: ‘The King of Spain, as a temporal sovereign, is anxious above all to safeguard and to increase his dominions … The preservation of the Catholic religion which is the principal aim of the Pope is only a pretext for His Majesty, whose principal aim is the security and aggrandisement of his dominions’. It is true that Sixtus V had a deep and personal aversion to Spain and a low estimate of its king, but these opinions were not peculiar to one pope. There were conflicts between Philip II and almost every pope with whom he dealt, which makes it impossible to explain those conflicts in terms of personalities and points to some deeper and more permanent cause.

‘I am going through a mental hell’: Political crisis and the Admiralty, August – December 1931

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 377-397
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
National Government ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Foreign Office ◽  
Eventual Outcome

Austen Chamberlain did not play a significant role in the events leading up to the political crisis or the decision to form a National Government on 24 August 1931. The eventual outcome of those developments, however, delivered a bitter blow to his self-esteem and marked a major watershed in his career. Had the Conservatives won the 1929 election, Chamberlain believed Baldwin would have returned him to the Foreign Office as he had promised. He continued to nurture this expectation throughout the period in Opposition. Even after being struck forcibly by the ‘violent animus against the “Old Gang”’ and the very specific attacks upon his foreign policy in Egypt and China at the Caxton Hall meeting in October 1930, he still consoled himself with the thought that none of his colleagues were excluded from criticism; that the critics consisted mainly of reactionary, disreputable or disgruntled groups (often all three) without ‘many young men of a decent type’; and that such grousing was symptomatic of the frustration engendered by Baldwin's lack of leadership and a natural impatience for youth to have its chance. As a result, he remained content to believe that not only did he still have much to contribute in foreign affairs but that there was no one else with a comparable claim to the portfolio.

scholarly journals Rights of and over Animals in the Ius Naturae et Gentium (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 257-261
Author(s):  
Annabel Brett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Legitimate Violence ◽  
Academic Genre

De jure naturae et gentium, “The law of nature and of nations,” is the title of Samuel Pufendorf's eight-volume masterpiece of philosophical jurisprudence, first published in 1672. It provides the tag by which an entire discourse is known, one that dominated legal philosophy at European universities for over two hundred years. Pufendorf's Protestant articulation of its principles was pivotal both for transmitting it to the Eighteenth Century and for giving it a history, which in his eyes began with his fellow-Protestant Hugo Grotius. In fact, however, its roots stretch back to the early Sixteenth Century, to the lawyers whom Philip Melanchthon gathered around him at Wittenberg and (more importantly for the future structure of the discourse) to the Catholic scholastic theologians who were originally based at Salamanca in Spain but subsequently spread out over the whole of Counter-Reformation Europe. In the confessional conflict that would burn throughout the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries, theologians on all sides used law to define the space of the political, and used the idea of natural law to underpin that space, even while shaping it differently according to their divergent narratives of sin and redemption. While the ius naturae et gentium was an academic genre, therefore, its content was not. It was a theory and a legitimation of the state, and the arc of its reasoning from nature to the nations ran through the institution of political power. The state and its power are constructed not so much upon right (ius) per se but on the potential for the violation of right (iniuria), and the demand for such violation to be vindicated, by law or ultimately by war. At its very barest—although this is to traduce the richness and complexity of the discourse—the ius naturae et gentium is thus a theory of legitimate violence. When it comes to animals, what we find is that they are systematically excluded from the potential to suffer violation of right and therefore from political space and political justice. As we shall see, however, this did not always mean that they were totally excluded from any kind of right or that every act of violence against them was always legitimate.

Church Ordinances and Regulations of the Dutch Synods ‘Under the Cross’ (1563-1566) Compared With the French (1559-1563)

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 187-205
Author(s):  
F. R. J. Knetsch
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Elizabeth I ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Charles V ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church

In 1559 Philip II left the Netherlands for Spain, where, from then on, he was to rule his empire. The government of the Provinces united by his father, Charles V, was left to his bastard sister Margaret, Duchess of Parma. Although she faithfully followed the Habsburg line, which in religion meant opposing Protestantism, her reign was characterized by a certain lack of firmness, enabling opposing factions to assert themselves. Shortly before Philip’s departure, Henry II, his French rival, had died in a tournament. His children and widow were as unable to quell the religious unrest in France as Margaret was in the Netherlands. In this situation, Calvinism grew irresistibly: from around 1555, it had already increased greatly in strength under Henry II, and in 1559 it had managed to hold a synod in Paris. That synod, as well as drawing up a Confession of Faith, produced its Discipline or Church Ordinance; and the best way of tracing the growth of Calvinism is to examine how rapidly the synods met, and to see how the Church Ordinances were adjusted to meet particular circumstances. That this development in the French Reformed Church had repercussions in the adjoining Netherlands, where the same language was spoken, at least in part, needs scarcely to be emphasized. Besides, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Calvinist refugee congregations were established in England, and these, in turn, could be used as bases for serving the Netherlands.

II. The Low Countries

1956 ◽  
Vol 12 (03) ◽  
pp. 234-245
Author(s):  
Gordon Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Charles V ◽  
Unique Outcome ◽  
The Middle Ages

The contest between monarchy and representative institutions had a unique outcome in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century as a result of several factors. The most obvious of these is the fact that their rulers had inherited a royal title in Castile and Aragon. The financial and administrative institutions of the modern state which the monarchs attempted to introduce into their possessions in the Low Countries were therefore bound to be regarded as foreign importations. They conflicted with the representative institutions which had grown up in the Netherlands as elsewhere in Europe during the Middle Ages. The chief of these, the Estates-General, continued to flourish in the Low Countries long after they had entered upon hopeless decline in France and Spain. Moreover, the wealth of the Low Countries, industrially, commercially, and financially the most advanced region of sixteenth-century Europe, made them an attractive target for the Hapsburg bureaucracy, harried as it was by the gargantuan task of financing the wars of Charles V and Philip II.

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