Abstract
To argue the case for a Rankean ‘primacy of foreign policy’ in British politics at the end of the long nineteenth century seems, at best, counter-intuitive. At worst, it smacks of a certain Teutonic rigidity, ill-suited to such a laissez-faire entity as the Victorian and Edwardian state or the protean nature and fluidity of Britain’s external relations. It has been tempting, therefore, for historians to shelter behind the observations on the subject by one foreign secretary of the period. ‘[T]he true reason’ of British foreign policy, Sir Edward Grey observed after the Great War, ‘is not to be found in far-sighted views or large conceptions or great schemes’ attributed to it by historians.1
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Notes
Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1925) Twenty-Five Years, 1892–1916 (2 vols, New York: Hodder & Stoughton) I, p. 6.
K.T. Hoppen (1998) The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846–1886 (Oxford: Oxford University Press);
G.R. Searle’s magisterial sequel (2004) A New England: Peace and War, 1886–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), though more appreciative of the significance of foreign policy, implicitly favours domestic developments.
H.C.G. Matthew (1973) The Liberal Imperialists: The Ideas and Politics of a Post-Gladstonian Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press);
M. Bentley (1984) Politics without Democracy, 1815–1914: Perceptions and Preoccupation in British Government (London: Fontana). Curiously, in the latter’s study of Salisbury, one of the preeminent foreign secretaries of the period, foreign policy is dismissed as irrelevant, idem (2001) Lord Salisbury’s World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 264–265.
J. Parry (2006) The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
N. Henderson (1987) Channels and Tunnels: Reflections on Britain and Abroad (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 78.
U. Muhlack (1995) ‘Nachwort’, in idem (ed.) Leopold von Ranke: Die grossen Mächte/Politisches Gespräch (Frankfurt), pp. 113–143; B. Simms (2003) ‘The return of the primacy of foreign policy’, German History XXI, 275–287.
H.D. Traill (1881) Central Government (London, 1881), pp. 78–80;
G.H. LeMay (1979) The Victorian Constitution (London: Duckworth), p. 23.
R.A. Jones (1983) The British Diplomatic Service, 1815–1914 (Gerrards Cross: Smythe), pp. 40–45;
F. Hardie (1935) The Political Influence of Queen Victoria, 1861–1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 142–182. A modern assessment of the role of the Crown in Victoria’s reign remains an urgent desideratum.
Queen Victoria to Russell, 8 August 1864, in G.E. Buckle (ed.) (1926) The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd series, 1862–1878 (3 vols, London: John Murray) I, p. 243 [hereafter LQV]; Granville to Queen Victoria, 14 November 1870, and vice versa, 16 June 1871, ibid. II, pp. 84–85 and 135–136.
Welby to de Bunsen, 1 December 1904, De Bunsen Mss, Bodleian Library Oxford, box 15; Paget to Satow (private), 22 August 1898, Satow Mss, The National Archives (Public Record Office) [hereafter TNA (PRO), PRO 30/33/5/5; B.C. Busch (1980) Hardinge of Penshurst: A Study in the Old Diplomacy (Hamden, CT: Archon Books), pp. 32–35.
Sheffield to Lyons, 4 January 1880, Lyons Mss, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester, box 199; Cartwright to Ponsonby, 6 November 1912, Cartwright Mss, Northamptonshire Record Office, Northampton, C(A) 45; P. Magnus (1964) King Edward the Seventh (London: Penguin), pp. 308–315 and 387–388;
F. Hardie (1970) The Political Influence of the British Monarchy, 1868–1952 (New York: Batsford), pp. 100–108;
S. Heffer (1998) Power and Place: The Political Consequences of Edward VII (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), pp. 105–107.
K. Rose (1983) King George V (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), pp. 164–166.
Cairns to Disraeli (confidential), 1 October 1877, ibid., dep. Hughenden 91/3; Queen Victoria to Disraeli, 13 November 1877, LQV (2) ii, 573–574. For some insights into Dizzy’s ‘low politics’, see J. Charmley (1999) Splendid Isolation?: Britain and the Balance of Power, 1874–1914 (London: Hodder & Stoughton), pp. 95–112;
B.G.R. Grosvenor (2009) Lord Derby and the Politics of Foreign Policy during the Great Eastern Crisis, 1875–8’ (PhD thesis, University of East Anglia), passim.
Lady G. Cecil (1921–1932) Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (4 vols, London: Hodder & Stoughton) III, pp. 184–185.
Rosebery to Kimberley (confidential), 6 April 1895, Kimberley Mss, National Library of Scotland [hereafter NLS], MS 10243; P. Stansky (1964) Ambitions and Strategies: The Struggle for the Leadership of the Liberal Party in the 1890s (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 124–125;
T.G. Otte (2007) The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894–1905 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 57–59.
T.G. Otte (2000) ‘A question of leadership: Lord Salisbury, the unionist cabinet and foreign policy-making’, Contemporary British History XIV, 1–26.
Chirol to Hardinge (private), 15 February 1912 and 10 April 1913, Hardinge Mss, Cambridge University Library [hereafter CUL], vols. 92 and 93; B.K. Murray (1990) ‘Lloyd George, the Navy Estimates, and the Inclusion of Rating Relief in the 1914 Budget’, Welsh Historical Review XV, 58–78;
K. Neilson and T.G. Otte (2009) The Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 1854–1946 (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 143–147.
Quotes from Haldane to mother, 25 July 1914, Haldane Mss, NLS, MS 5991; and W.S. Churchill (1932 edn) The World Crisis, 1911–1918 (London:), p. 109;
also P. Jalland and J. Stubbs (1981) ‘The Irish question after the outbreak of war in 1914: Some unfinished business’, English Historical Review XCVI, 778–780.
G. Martin’s characterisation of the Empire in general is equally apt for the policy apparatus, idem (1972) ‘Was there a British Empire’, Historical Journal XV, 563; J.P. Mackintosh (1962) ‘The role of the Committee of Imperial Defence before 1914’, English Historical Review, LXXVII, 490–503.
T.G. Otte (2008) ‘The Foreign Office and Defence of Empire, 1856–1914’, in G. Kennedy (ed.) Imperial Defence: The Old World Order, 1856–1956 (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 14–17.
S. Roskill (1970–1974) Hankey: Man of Secrets (3 vols, London: Collins) I, pp. 334–336;
J.F. Naylor (1984) A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Lord G. Hamilton (1917) Parliamentary Reminiscences and Reflections, 1868 to 1885 (London: Murray), pp. 68–69.
Granville to Halifax (private), 27 December 1873, Granville Mss, TNA (PRO), PRO 30/29/64; for the 1907 negotiations see K. Neilson (1995) Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy towards Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 271–288;
F. Kazamzadeh (1968) Russia and Britain in the Persian Gulf, 1864–1914 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), pp. 472–479.
M. Ceadel’s recent magisterial study (2002) Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press);
P. Laity (2001) The British Peace Movement, 1870–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon).
Salisbury to Curzon, 23 December 1897, Curzon Mss, British Library Oriental and India Office Collection, London, Mss. Eur. F. 112/1B; T.G. Otte (2002) “Floating downstream”?: Lord Salisbury and British Foreign Policy, 1878–1902’, in idem (ed.) The Makers of British Foreign Policy (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 99–100.
Bulwer-Lytton to Russell (private), 31 January 1872, Ampthill Mss, TNA (PRO), FO 918/58. For the middle class mood see E.J. Feuchtwanger (1968) Disraeli, Democracy, and the Tory Party: Conservative Leadership and Organization after the Second Reform Bill (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 29–30. The extant literature on the subject of public opinion and foreign policy is vast and varied. For the most part, it is based on the assumption that public opinion exercised a direct influence.
Exemplary, M. Swartz (1985) The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: Macmillan), pp. 5–6;
for a more nuanced approach see W. Mulligan (2008) ‘Mobs and diplomats: The Alabama affair and British diplomacy, 1865–1872’, in M. Mösslang and T. Riotte (eds) The Diplomats’ World: A Cultural History of Diplomacy, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 105–132.
R.T. Shannon (1963) Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London: Thomas Nelson), remains the locus classicus;
D.W. Bebbington (1982) The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin),
P.T. Marsh (ed.) (1979) The Conscience of the Victorian State (Syracuse. NY: Syracuse UP).
Phipps to de Bunsen (private), 5 December 1904, De Bunsen Mss, Bodl., box 14; E.D. Morel (1909) Great Britain and the Congo: The Pillage of the Congo Basin, with an Introduction by Sir A. Conan Doyle (London: Smith, Elder & Co).
H.S. Hallet (1898) ‘The partition of China’, Nineteenth Century XLIII, 164;
C.C. Eldridge (1973) England’s Mission: The Imperial Idea in the Age of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: Macmillan), pp. 246–247;
D. Bell (2007) The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
The subject still awaits its full treatment; for a discussion of some of this, see T.G. Otte (2006) “Avenge England’s dishonour”: By-elections, Parliament, and the Politics of Foreign Policy in 1898’, English Historical Review CXXI, 385–428.
Parliamentary Debates, 5th series xxii (13 March 1911), cols. 1977–1991 [hereafter PD]; for the event, see T.G. Otte (2010) ‘Grey ambassadors: The Dreadnought and British Foreign Policy’, in A.D. Lambert (ed.) The Dreadnought and the Edwardian Age (Aldershot: Ashgate).
A.C. Murray diary, 7 January 1912, Elibank Mss, NLS, MS 8814; Grey to Lloyd George (private), 5 September 1911, Lloyd George Mss, House of Lords Record Office [hereafter HLRO], C/4/14; M.G. Fry (1977) Lloyd George and Foreign Policy: The Education of a Statesman, 1890–1916 (Montreal and London: McGill), pp. 131–181.
Kennedy to Fergusson, 20 December 1886, Fergusson Mss, TNA (PRO), FO 800/26; P.T. Marsh (2002) ‘The end of the Anglo-French commercial alliance, 1860–1894’, in P. Chassaigne and M.L. Dockrill (eds) Anglo-French Relations, 1898–1998: From Fashoda to Jospin (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 34–43.
Lister to Russell (private), 28 April 1879, Ampthill Mss, TNA (PRO), FO 918/49; K. Urbach (1999) Bismarck’s Favourite Englishman: Lord Odo Russell’s Mission to Berlin (London: I.B. Tauris), pp. 197–198.
A. Friedberg (1987) The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press);
P.M. Kennedy (1989), The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict, 1500–2000 (London: Fontana), pp. 290–299.
Salisbury to Chamberlain (private), 13 December 1896, Chamberlain Mss, Birmingham University Library [hereafter BUL], JC 5/67/56. Salisbury was not alone in holding such views. His erstwhile rival Randolph Churchill similarly regarded the Treasury as ‘a lot of d — d Gladstonians’, H.G. Hutchinson (ed.) (1922) The Private Diary of Sir Algernon West (London: John Murray), pp. 4–5.
H.C.G. Matthew (1979) ‘Disraeli, gladstone, and the politics of mid-victorian budgets’, Historical Journal, XXII, 615–643;
T.G. Otte (2004) ‘Old diplomacy: Reflections on the foreign office before 1914’, in G. Johnson (ed.) The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge), pp. 32–33.
B. Mallet (1913) British Budgets, 1887–8 to 1912–13 (London: Macmillan), pp. 1–8.
Goschen redeemed the situation with his 1888 conversion of the National Debt, see memo. Goschen, ‘National debt conversion’, 28 February 1888, CAB 37/21/4; A.E. Elliot (1911) The Life of George Joachim Goschen, First Viscount Goschen, 1831–1907 (2 vols, London: Longmans) II, pp. 137–184.
Hicks Beach, 1901 budget speech as quoted in Lady V. Hicks Beach (1932) Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach (Earl St. Aldwyn) (2 vols, London: Macmillan) II, p. 138.
S.S. Gladstone [Director, Bank of England] to Hicks Beach, 12 March 1900, and Hamilton to Hicks Beach, 5 July 1900, TNA (PRO), T 168/87 and /48; also T.G. Otte (2006) ‘Black Michael’: Sir Michael Hicks Beach and the Problems of Late Victorian Conservatism (Tunbridge Wells: Conservative History Group), 17.
Hicks Beach to Salisbury (confidential), 26 December 1897, St. Aldwyn Mss, Gloucestershire Record Office, Gloucester, PCC/34; E.W. Edwards (1987) British Diplomacy and Finance in China, 1895–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon), pp. 21–22;
D.C.M. Platt (1968) Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon).
Memo. Hamilton, ‘Special programme for new construction’, 1 November 1888, TNA (PRO), CAB 37/22/30; Goschen to Salisbury, 19 and 22 December 1889, Salisbury Mss, Hatfield House, 3M/E/Goschen; Naval Defence Act, 1889 (52 Vict., cap. 8); A.J. Marder (1964) The Anatomy of Sea Power: A History of British Naval Power in the Pre-Dreadnought Era (London: Cass), pp. 126–129;
T.J. Spinner (1973) George Joachim Goschen: The Transformation of a Victorian Liberal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 141–143.
Lloyd George to Asquith, 2 February 1909, Lloyd George Mss, HLRO, C/6/11/2; memo. Lloyd George, January 1914, Asquith Mss, Bodl., MS Asquith 25; B.B. Gilbert, ‘David Lloyd George, land, the budget, and social reform’, American Historical Review, LXXXI, 1058–1066; K. Neilson (1991) ‘“Greatly exaggerated”: The myth of the decline of Great Britain before 1914’, International History Review, XIII, 695–725.
Memo. Chamberlain, ‘The financial situation’, 7 December 1903, Chamberlain Mss, BUL, AC 17/2/17; instructive also G.C. Peden (2007) Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Hardinge to Goschen (private), 20 April 1909, Hardinge Mss, CUL, vol. 17; P.T. Marsh (1999) Bargaining on Europe: Britain and the First Common Market, 1860–1892 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), pp. 1–7.
P.M. Kennedy (1976) ‘The tradition of appeasement in British Foreign Policy, 1865–1939’, British Journal of International Studies, II, 196.
Mema. Corry, 22 January 1878, and Disraeli, 27 September 1879, Disraeli Mss, Bodl., Dep. Hughenden 69/1 and 69/2; R. Blake (1967) Disraeli (London: St Martin’s Press), pp. 676–679.
Salisbury to Queen Victoria, 10 February 1887, TNA (PRO), CAB 41/20/31; C.J. Lowe (1965) Salisbury and the Mediterranean, 1886–1896 (London: Routledge), pp. 16–17.
Salisbury to Baring (private), 25 February 1887, Cromer Mss, TNA (PRO), FO 601/7; M.P. Hornik (1940) ‘The special mission of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Constantinople, 1885–7’, English Historical Review, LV, 616–617; Otte, ‘“Floating downstream”’, 111–612.
Memo. Rosebery, 31 January 1894, Rosebery Mss, NLS, MS 10135; G. Martel (1980) ‘Documenting the great game: “World policy” and the turbulent frontier’, International History Review II, 288–308.
Memo. Clarke, ‘The Afghanistan problem’, 20 March 1905, TNA (PRO), CAB 38/8/26; Spring-Rice to Lansdowne (private), 6 August 1905, Lansdowne Mss, TNA (PRO), FO 800/116; T.G. Otte (2007) ‘The fragmenting of the Old World Order: Britain, the great powers and the war’, in R. Kowner (ed.) The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 100–102;
K. Neilson (2002) ‘“Control the whirlwind”: Sir Edward Grey as foreign secretary, 1906–1916’, in Otte (ed.) Makers of the Foreign Policy, pp. 129–131.
For a slightly different view see W. Mulligan (2008) ‘From case to narrative: The marquess of Lansdowne, Sir Edward Grey and the threat from Germany, 1900–1906’, International History Review XXX, 273–302.
Goschen to Rodd, 1 February 1913, Rennell of Rodd Mss, Bodl., box 15; Eisendecher to Harcourt, 13 March 1914, Harcourt Mss, Bodl., MS Harcourt dep. 443; M. Ekstein (1971) ‘Sir Edward Grey and imperial Germany in 1914’, Journal of Contemporary History, VI, 121–131.
‘The second treatise of government’, idem, P. Laslett (ed.) Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, repr. 1988), ch. XII, § 147, 366.
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Otte, T.G. (2010). ‘Chief of All Offices’: High Politics, Finance, and Foreign Policy, 1865–1914. In: Mulligan, W., Simms, B. (eds) The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, 1660–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230289628_15
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