The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914

✍ Scribed by Keith M. Wilson

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 208
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This collection of essays makes a major contribution to the growing debate on British foreign policy before the First World War, and mounts a sustained critique of the received interpretation that invites comparison with the work of Fritz Fischer on the foreign policy of Imperial Germany. The Policy of the Entente presents a realistic assessment of British priorities in the years before 1914, and considers the fundamental and conflicting pressures that determined the formulation of foreign policy. The author concludes that British policy, far from being increasingly Eurocentric, was emphatically imperial: indeed many of the difficulties faced by Britain's rulers stemmed from their inability to live up to this Imperial self-image.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Frontmatter......Page 2
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Introduction......Page 10
1 - The Poverty of the Entente Policy......Page 13
2 - The Politics of Liberal Foreign Policy I......Page 26
3 - The Politics of Liberal Foreign Policy II......Page 46
4 - The Dissimulation of the Balance of Power......Page 68
5 - The Fiction of the Free Hand......Page 94
6 - The Invention of Germany......Page 109
7 - The Military Entente with France......Page 130
8 - The Cabinet's Decision for War, 1914......Page 144
Notes......Page 157
Bibliography......Page 196
Index......Page 206