The Diplomatic Margins: State Visits to Scandinavia

Abstract

The inclusion of a whole chapter on Edward’s Scandinavian tours in this volume may be surprising to readers accustomed to thinking of British diplomatic efforts in relation to the Great Powers as being more important than consideration of state visits to nations which were, in terms of their global status, minor powers.¹ Why have these not been included as a footnote or preliminary to another chapter dealing with one of the major flashpoints for British diplomacy in this period, rather like the private visit by Edward to Kiel Week in 1904? While Spain was also a peripheral power in many ways, it was important to British diplomacy because of the coincidence of imperial interests and, above all, because of Gibraltar. As the last chapter also highlighted, it was important because it was a state visit organised not by the King, but by the British government. The state visits to Scandinavia were not linked to any major piece of pre-war British diplomatic policy such as the Entente Cordiale or the Anglo-French agreement with Spain, so they have not drawn the attention of diplomatic historians. There was also no scandal or courtly intrigue linked to the Scandinavian enterprises, and so the interlude has not been of interest to Edward VII’s biographers — at most, they simply acknowledge he went there.