Catholicism and Foreign Policy: Esme Howard and British Policy towards Poland, 1919

2022 ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
B. J. C. McKercher
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
British Policy

‘An odd question enough’. Charles James Fox, the crown and British policy during the Hanoverian crisis of 1806

1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Simms
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
North Sea ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Government ◽  
Political Biography ◽  
The North ◽  
British Policy ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Sea Ports ◽  
George Iii

ABSTRACTThe essay aims to close a longstanding gap in the political historiography of later Georgian Britain by examining the ‘Hanoverian Crisis’ of 1806. Drawing on a broad range of British, Hanoverian and Prussian records, the essay demonstrates that the British–Prussian conflict of that year was caused not – as conventionally assumed – by the closure of the North Sea ports to British shipping, but by the Prussian occupation of George III's electoral land of Hanover. The essay then shows how the commitment of the British government to its restitution was largely motivated by the desire of Charles James Fox and the incoming Ministry of All the Talents to build bridges to the crown. This stance was in complete contradiction both to the broad thrust of the new ‘maritime’ foreign policy of the Talents and to Fox's previous policy in matters Hanoverian. Subsequently the implications of this for our understanding of Fox's political biography are assessed. Finally, the essay illuminates the existence of a coherent ‘Hanoverian Faction’ in London headed by Count Münster which together with a highly activist George III was often able to tip the balance in the formulation of British policy.

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.

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.

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.

Presidential Address: The Foundations of British Policy

1947 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 47-67
Author(s):  
R. W. Seton-Watson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
British Policy ◽  
State Secrets

I fear that my address to-day will inevitably disappoint expectations, for I have no state secrets to offer you, and in the time at my disposal I obviously cannot hope to cover so vast a field. A more modest, and therefore more correct, title would be ‘Some Aspects of Foreign Policy’, planned merely in outline, but capable of evoking and sustaining fuller discussion in parallel fields.

Groupthink and the Hostage Rescue Mission

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rescue Mission ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Policy Decision Making ◽  
Basic Argument

Irving Janis's work on groupthink has attracted considerable attention from those who seek to explain foreign-policy decision making. The basic argument – that excessiveesprit de corpsand amiability restrict the critical faculties of small decision-making groups, thereby leading to foreign-policy fiascos – is both an appealing and a stimulating one. In addition, it is also an argument that is capable of being tested against empirical evidence. Thus, Frank Heller has suggested that groupthink may be very useful in explaining British policy during the Falklands Crisis. The purpose of this note is to indicate the utility of the notion of groupthink in explaining one recent foreign-policy fiasco, the attempt by the United States to rescue its hostages in Tehran.

INTELLIGENCE AND LLOYD GEORGE'S SECRET DIPLOMACY IN THE NEAR EAST, 1920–1922

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 707-728 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL-JOSEPH MACARTHUR-SEAL
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Near East ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
British Government ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
British Policy

ABSTRACTThe article seeks to establish the significance of intercepted Greek diplomatic messages as both historical source and catalyst in Britain's Near Eastern policy in the crucial years of 1920–2. Specifically, the intercepts reveal how members of the British government, foremost among them the prime minister, covertly supported Greek expansion in Asia Minor even after declaring neutrality in the conflict. Such evidence confirms rumours that were dismissed as fallacious by those implicated and by their defenders in later historiography. Aside from their value as historical sources, the intercepts had an immediate and significant impact which has also been neglected. Intelligence regarding a distant conflict became central to a war at the heart of Westminster and helped mobilize a cross-party, transnational coalition against Lloyd George's foreign policy in the region. Although Lloyd George's opponents, incited by intelligence revelations, eventually succeeded in transforming British policy, this reverse did little to reduce the scale of the resultant catastrophe.

BRITISH POLICY TOWARDS EUROPE, 1919–1939 Neville Chamberlain and appeasement. By R. Caputi. London: Susquehanna University Press, 2000. Pp. 271. ISBN 1-57591-027-6. £35.00. The Paris Peace Conference, 1919: peace without victory? Edited by M. Dockrill and J. Fisher. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xvi+97. ISBN 0-333-77630-5. £40.00. British foreign policy, 1919–1939. By P. W. Doerr. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Pp. xi+291. ISBN 0-7190-4672-6. £14.99. Neville Chamberlain. By D. Dutton. London: Edward Arnold, 2001. Pp. xii+245. ISBN 0-340-70627-9. £12.99. Austen Chamberlain and the commitment to Europe: British foreign policy, 1924–1929. By R. S. Grayson. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Pp. xviii+318. ISBN 0-7146-4758-6. £37.50. Lloyd George and the lost peace: from Versailles to Hitler, 1919–1940. By A. Lentin. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xvii+182. ISBN 0-333-91961-0. £40.00. Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war. By M. Macmillan. London: John Murray, 2001. Pp. xii+574. ISBN 0-7195-5939-1. £25.00. ‘The Times’ and appeasement: the journals of A. L. Kennedy, 1932–1939. Edited by G. Martel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Royal Historical Society, Camden Fifth Series. Pp. xvii+312. ISBN 0-521-79354-8. £40.00. Britain and the Ruhr crisis. By E. Y. O'Riordan. London: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. x+237. ISBN 0-333-76483-8. £40.00. The Neville Chamberlain diary letters,I: The making of a politician, 1915–1920. Edited by R. Self. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Pp. ix+423. ISBN 1-84014-691-5. £75.00. The Neville Chamberlain diary letters, II: The reform years, 1921–1927. Edited by R. Self. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. Pp. x+461. ISBN 1-84014-692-3. £75.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 479-492
Author(s):  
GAYNOR JOHNSON
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
British Foreign Policy ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Times ◽  
First World

In the last eighty years, an enormous amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to explaining why Europe was at the centre of two cataclysmic conflicts in the first half of the twentieth century. The books considered here represent part of a resurgence of interest in British foreign policy in the interwar period and are primarily concerned with the policy of reconciliation towards the former Central Powers after the First World War, especially the appeasement of Germany. They offer a further opportunity to challenge the still-held misapprehension that appeasement was a strand of British policy that only appeared after Hitler's rise to power. They also offer a means of examining British foreign policy through sources inside and outside the government. Gordon Martel's volume illustrates the amount of journalistic pressure that was put on the British government to recognize and act on the likely threats to international peace. Austen and Neville Chamberlain, the sons of the great nineteenth-century Conservative politician, Joseph Chamberlain, were at the centre of the British foreign policy making process during the interwar period. Indeed, Robert Self's two volumes of letters written by Neville Chamberlain to his sisters illustrate how steeped in foreign and domestic politics the whole Chamberlain family was. Richard Grayson sees a long, unbroken attempt to accommodate Germany diplomatically starting with Austen Chamberlain and the treaty of Locarno. The importance of Neville Chamberlain's contribution to the history of British foreign policy is offered further recognition through surveys of the historiography of his premiership by David Dutton and Robert Caputi.

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