scholarly journals Elite-Mass Agreement in British Foreign Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srdjan Vucetic

Thirty years ago, William Wallace likened British foreign policy to a musical tug-of-war between the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘Europeans’, attributing ‘all the best tunes’ to the former. This study revisits Wallace’s thesis and its main concept, national identity. It finds that Wallace was right to draw attention to the power of the ruling elite to shape Englishness and Britishness. However, the study also finds that ‘global’ foreign policy ideas were never the exclusive province of a segment of the British elite. Rather, they circulated in English and more broadly British society writ large, reflecting and reinforcing deep seated, even unselfconscious agreements between both ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘European’ elites, on one hand, and much of the mass consumer public, on the other. It follows that the constraints posed on possibilities of foreign policy change were always greater than Wallace had suggested.

2022 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Srdjan Vucetic

Abstract Thirty years ago, William Wallace likened British foreign policy to a musical tug-of-war between the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ and ‘Europeans’, attributing ‘all the best tunes’ to the former. This article revisits Wallace's thesis and its main concept: national identity. It finds that Wallace was right to draw attention to the power of the ruling elite to shape Englishness and Britishness. However, the article also finds that ‘global’ foreign policy ideas were never the exclusive province of a segment of the British elite. Rather, they circulated in English and more broadly British society writ large, reflecting and reinforcing deep-seated, even unselfconscious, agreements between both ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘European’ elites on the one hand, and much of the mass consumer public on the other. It follows that the constraints posed on possibilities of foreign policy change were always greater than Wallace had suggested; that a ‘lesser’ British foreign policy that was, and still is, so hard to imagine for the British is significant for analysis of dynamics of ‘western’ knowledge production that come under critique in this special issue. But rather than focusing exclusively on elites, critical analyses of knowledge exchange should be attuned to popular common sense, too.


2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 605-624
Author(s):  
BRENDAN SIMMS

Parliament and foreign policy in the eighteenth century. By Jeremy Black. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xiii+261. ISBN 0-521-83331-0. £45.00.Art and arms: literature, politics and patriotism during the seven years' war. By M. John Cardwell. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Pp. xii+306. ISBN 0-7190-6618-2. £49.99.The British Isles and the war of American independence. By Stephen Conway. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. vii+407. ISBN 0-19-820649-3. £60.00.Revolution, religion and national identity: imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745–1795. By Peter M. Doll. London: Associated University Presses, 2000. Pp. 336. ISBN 0-8386-3830-9. £38.00.Politics and the nation: Britain in the mid-eighteenth century. By Bob Harris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 392. ISBN 0-19-924693. £45.00.Parliaments, nations, and identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850. Edited by Julian Hoppit. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Pp. xii+225. ISBN 0-7190-6247-0. £15.99.Politik-Propaganda-Patronage. Francis Hare und die englische Publizistik im spanischen Erbfolgekrieg. By Jens Metzdorf. Mainz: Verlag Philip von Zabern, 2000. Pp. xv+566. ISBN 3-8053-2584-3. DM 114.00.Irish opinion and the American Revolution, 1760–1783. By Vincent Morley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x+366. ISBN 0-521-81386-7. £48.00.Breaking the backcountry: the Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765. By Matthew C. Ward. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. Pp. 329. ISBN 0-8229-4214-3. $34.95.The Jacobites and Russia, 1715–1750. By Rebecca Wills. East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002. Pp. 253. ISBN 1-86232-142-6. £20.00.It has never been possible to write the history of eighteenth-century Britain as that of an island entirely by itself. Over a century ago, the Cambridge historian, J. R. Seeley, famously insisted that the history of England (sic) lay as much in America and Asia as in England, whilst G. M. Trevelyan's classic narrative of England under Queen Anne (3 vols., 1930–4) was presented against the background of the War of the Spanish Succession. More recently, John Brewer's remarkable Sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1784 (1989) demonstrated the extent to which the British state, and its fiscal-political structures, were geared towards the mobilization of military power, primarily to be deployed against France. In The sense of the people: politics, culture and imperialism in England, 1715–1785 (1995), Kathleen Wilson revealed the importance of empire and imperial expansion in popular politicization, whilst Linda Colley's Britons (1992) showed just how central the struggle with France was to the development of eighteenth-century British national identity. At the same time, our understanding of the European and global state system in which Britain played such a prominent role has been illuminated by Hamish Scott's British foreign policy in the age of the American revolution (1990), together with many publications by Jeremy Black including British foreign policy in the age of Walpole (1985) and America or Europe? British foreign policy, 1739–1763 (1997).


Author(s):  
Dr. Malika SAHEL

Established between the Two World Wars in 1934, the British Council was charged to undertake Britain’s cultural relations with other countries. However, its direct involvement and adjustment to Britain’s sudden political decisions, on the international scene, is an indication on the inter-relationship between the British cultural section and the other sections of British foreign policy despite the structural separation of the British Council from British Embassies abroad and the autonomous status this cultural agency was believed to enjoy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srdjan Vucetic

Britain’s tenaciously global foreign policy after 1945 was never simply a function of the nation’s ruling class acting on the basis of elite obsessions or after some sort of bipartisan consensus. Rather, this policy developed from mainstream, gradually evolving ideas about “us,” “them,” and “Others” generated within a broader British and, more specifically, English society.


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