Sir Francis Bertie (from 1915 Lord Bertie of Thame) was a senior British diplomat of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He is perhaps best known for the thirteen years between 1905 and 1918 during which time he was Britain's ambassador in Paris, and it is with this period of his life that Dr Hamilton is mainly concerned. The book thus examines his contribution to the evolution and maintenance of the entente cordiale, the nature of his 'anti-Germanism', his influence upon Sir Edward Grey and other British statesmen, and the eclipse of professional diplomacy during the first world war. Above all it is a study of a man whom another British diplomat was later to describe as 'the very last of the great ambassadors'.

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In recent decades the study of British foreign policy and diplomacy has broadened in focus. No longer is it enough for historians to look at the actions of the elite figures - diplomats and foreign secretaries - in isolation; increasingly the role of their advisers and subordinates, and those on the fringes of the diplomatic world, is recognised as having exerted critical influence on key decisions and policies. This volume gives further impetus to this revelation, honing in on the fringes of British diplomacy through a selection of case studies of individuals who were able to influence policy. By contextualising each study, the volume explores the wider circles in which these individuals moved, exploring the broader issues affecting the processes of foreign policy. Not the least of these is the issue of official mindsets and of networks of influence in Britain and overseas, inculcated, for example, in the leading public schools, at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and in gentlemen's clubs in London's West End. As such the volume contributes to the growing literature on human agency as well as mentalité studies in the history of international relations. Moreover it also highlights related themes which have been insufficiently studied by international historians, for example, the influence that outside groups such as missionaries and the press had on the shaping of foreign policy and the role that strategy, intelligence and the experience of war played in the diplomatic process. Through such an approach the workings of British diplomacy during the high-tide of empire is revealed in new and intriguing ways.

Between 1894 and 1905 the question of the Chinese Empire's future development, its survival even, was the most pressing overseas problem facing the Great Powers. The frantic 'scramble for Africa' and the often more intense drama of the 'Eastern Question' notwithstanding, it was the 'China Question' that had the most profound implications for the Powers. Since China's defeat in the 1894-5 war with Japan, the country's final disintegration was widely anticipated; and so was a wider Great Power conflict in the event of China's implosion. At times, that prospect seemed very real. The prospect of China's break-up and of large-scale international conflict in its wake altered the configuration among the Great Powers. Instability in the Far East had ramifications beyond the confines of the region; and, as this study shows, the events of 1894-5 initiated a wider transformation of international politics. No Power was more affected by these changes than Britain. The 'China Question', therefore, provides an ideal prism through which to view the problems of late nineteenth-century British world policy, and the policy of 'isolationism' in particular. This study breaks new ground by adopting a deliberately global approach in looking at British policy, emphasizing the connections between European and overseas developments, and by encompassing diplomatic, commercial, financial, and strategic factors as well as the politics of foreign policy.

This book focuses on Anglo-American disputes arising out of the civil war in the United States and British interests in the American continent: the Geneva Arbitration, the Venezuela-Guiana Arbitration and the Bhering Sea Arbitration. It draws on those cases as model proceedings which laid the foundations and inspiration for a promotion of international law through the Hague Conferences and by the work of English and American jurists. It considers the encouragement these cases gave to the promotion of public international law and how that contributed to the resolution of inter-state disputes.

Prior to World War I, Britain was at the center of global relations, utilizing tactics of diplomacy as it broke through the old alliances of European states. Historians have regularly interpreted these efforts as a reaction to the aggressive foreign policy of the German Empire. However, as Between Empire and Continent demonstrates, British foreign policy was in fact driven by a nexus of intra-British, continental and imperial motivations. Recreating the often heated public sphere of London at the turn of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking study carefully tracks the alliances, conflicts, and political maneuvering from which British foreign and security policy were born.

The historical literature on the first world war has devoted relatively little attention to the Allied blockade of the Central Powers. The few published studies have concentrated either on the blockade's naval aspects or exclusively on the British contribution. Little effort has been made heretofore to distinguish the French role. This study focuses on the French contribution to the diplomatic, as contrasted with the maritime, blockade of the Central Powers. It discusses primarily French relations with the so-called European border neutral states : principally Switzerland, but also the Netherlands and the three Scandinavian countries. Only in the diplomatic aspects of the Allied blockade program did the French play a distinctive role. Their token contribution to maritime blockade activity remained subordinate to the British. An examination of Franco-neutral rela tions involves not only a study of those diplomatic contacts per se but also a comparison of French and British tactics as a reflection of differing economic warfare concepts. This study also investigates the development of a French blockade organization to meet the demands of this new weapon, the diplomatic blockade.

With the creation of the Franco-Russian Alliance and the failure of the Reinsurance Treaty in the late nineteenth century, Germany needed a strategy for fighting a two-front war. In response, Field Marshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen produced a study that represented the apex of modern military planning. His Memorandum for a War against France, which incorporated a mechanized cavalry as well as new technologies in weaponry, advocated that Germany concentrate its field army to the west and annihilate the French army within a few weeks. For generations, historians have considered Schlieffen's writings to be the foundation of Germany's military strategy in World War I and have hotly debated the reasons why the plan, as executed, failed. In this important volume, international scholars reassess Schlieffen's work for the first time in decades, offering new insights into the renowned general's impact not only on World War I but also on nearly a century of military historiography. The contributors draw on newly available source materials from European and Russian archives to demonstrate both the significance of the Schlieffen Plan and its deficiencies. They examine the operational planning of relevant European states and provide a broad, comparative historical context that other studies lack. Featuring fold-out maps and abstracts of the original German deployment plans as they evolved from 1893 to 1914, this rigorous reassessment vividly illustrates how failures in statecraft as well as military planning led to the tragedy of the First World War.