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diplomacy created a nexus between the naval issue and colonial questions,

such as the Baghdad Railway project. Grey preferred to deal with these

problems discretely. The Wilhelmstrasse suggested a comprehensive settle-

ment of the naval race and the Middle Eastern railway. To some degree,

this was a not altogether incorrect interpretation by the Germans of the

evolving logic of Grey’s entente diplomacy. Crucially, however, the

German proposals envisaged a British neutrality pledge in the event of

a continental war. This linkage was unacceptable. The neutrality pledge

amounted to a form of carte blanche for Germany to provoke a contin-

ental war while Russia was still reeling from the aftershocks of 1905.

Exclusive cooperation with Germany over the Baghdad Railway, mean-

while, ran the risk of loosening the existing ties with France and heighten-

ing Russian security concerns along Russia’s southern frontiers. The end

result of all of this would have been the weakening of Britain’s much

improved international position in exchange for some degree of depen-

dence on Germany.

Inevitably, much diplomatic energy was consumed by the Anglo-

German antagonism. Some aspects of Anglo-German rivalry before 1914

were clearly exaggerated. Yet, the notion that the challenge posed by the

Reich was something of an ‘invention of the German menace’ as a device

to ‘divert attention from the British Empire’s vulnerability and rivet it on

Germany’ is a perverted and narrow interpretation of the historical evid-

ence.

If there was little concrete to ﬁght over, there was nothing illusory

about the ultimate object of Tirpitz’s naval build-up and Berlin’s ambi-

tions to establish Germany as the dominant Power in Europe. The root

problem was rather that German diplomacy lacked clear strategic guid-

ance; and this made it erratic and difﬁcult for the FO to ‘read’ accu-

rately.

The mounting tensions with Germany were compounded by

strains in the relations with Russia. The 1907 accord had reduced some of

Britain’s most pressing problems in Central Asia. The friendly noises

emanating from the Russian foreign ministry, the Anglo-Russian conven-

tion failed to restrain the more aggressive designs of Russia’s agents in

Persia and Central Asia in the last few years before 1914. Much of the

deterioration in the relations with Russia in that period was caused by the

recrudescence of Russia’s military power after 1910. The impact of this on

Britain was twofold. In Europe, it heightened German security fears and

so increased the willingness of the ruling circles in Berlin to contemplate

military solution before Russia became too strong. In an imperial context,

Russian policy in the Near East and Central Asia became more restless.

Indeed, Russia’s occupation of Kashgar in July 1912 and increased

pressure on Mongolia seemed to suggest the likelihood of renewed

instability in Central Asia.

Similarly, rumours of a possible Russo-German

rapprochement in 1913, St. Petersburg’s prolixity over Albanian independ-

ence in 1913–14 or its obstreperous position in the Spitzbergen negotia-

tions in the spring of 1914 were causes of further strains. By 1914, Russian

22 T.G. Otte

pressure was mounting on Persia, and an increasingly conﬁdent Russia

was constantly pushing the boundaries of the 1907 agreement.

Anglo-

Russian relations were changing on the eve of the Great War. Grey and

the FO faced the fact that the Anglo-Russian convention required a major

revision; and the prospect of failure, followed by a re-emergence of the

pre-1907 antagonism with Russia, was very real. Britain’s difﬁculties with

Russia reﬂected the peculiar nature of British world power with its two

foci on Europe and on Asia. Russia affected both. In Europe, a strong

Russia was needed to balance a restless and potentially aggressive

Germany, but a revived Russian Empire also had the potential of threaten-

ing Britain’s Asian interests. In his dealings with Russia, in the words of Sir

Arthur Nicolson, the Permanent Under-Secretary, Grey, had to follow

a ‘policy of dancing on a tight rope’.

The impact of the Russian and imperial factors on FO decision-making

during the July crisis of 1914 is a contentious point. Keith Wilson has

advanced the argument that the British decision to go to war was based on

an imperial set of priorities, that Britain went to war to protect her Asian

interests and that the perceived need to maintain good relations with

Russia was the determining consideration rather than concern about a

German threat to the balance of power in Europe. The implication is that

prior to 1914, Britain pursued some form of ‘appeasement’ of Russia and

that a major European war was a price well worth paying for the protec-

tion of Central Asian interests against a future Russian menace.

This

argument is problematic on a number of counts, not least because there is

no clear evidence connecting Grey’s decision-making with such calcula-

tions. Wilson’s argument is based on the 23 July 1914 memorandum by

George Clerk, senior clerk of the Eastern department, on the difﬁcult

state of Anglo-Russian relations. Clerk argued that good relations with

Russia were of paramount importance to Britain and that renewed Anglo-

Russian hostility might threaten vital imperial interests in Asia. According

Wilson’s interpretation, such imperial considerations must have been

background inﬂuences shaping Grey’s decision-making during the July

crisis.

A closer examination of the departmental paper trail shows that,

in this particular case, Grey himself did not see the memorandum until a

fortnight after the expiry of Britain’s ultimatum to Germany, by which

time he minuted that Clerk’s proposals ‘must of course now be sus-

pended’.

When placed in the wider context of late-nineteenth century Anglo-

Russian relations, Grey’s policy towards Russia was constant and consis-

tently even-handed. It was necessarily reactive, for Grey ‘could neither

compel Anglo-Russian relations to be cordial, nor force Russo-German

relations to be distant’.

Whilst there is no doubt the Russian foreign min-

isters Aleksandr Pyotrovich Izvolsky and Sergei Dimitrevich Sazonov

attempted political blackmail during the Bosnian annexation crisis of

1908–9 and in 1914 by threatening the end of the 1907 convention, the

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1856–1914 23

British government did not yield. Against advice by senior ofﬁcials, Grey

refused deﬁnitively to bind Britain to Russia. His acceptance of the need to

renegotiate the Anglo-Russian convention was no indication of his aim of a

full alliance with St. Petersburg. This might appear ‘paradoxical’,

but it

reﬂected the fact that by 1914 the 1907 settlement had turned out to be

little more than a ‘holding operation’ that had stabilised Anglo-Russian

relations in Central Asia. Whether a revised convention with Russia was

still in the realm of practical politics had war not broken out in 1914 is

speculative. What is certain is that British diplomats did anticipate the pos-

sible collapse of negotiations with Russia.

Yet, when Germany decided

upon the ‘calculated risk’ of a continental war, European calculations

superseded considerations of imperial interests.

Notes

1 P.M. Thornton, Foreign Secretaries of the XIX. Century (3 vols, London, 2nd edn.

1883), vol. III, 407.

2 Cedric James Lowe, Salisbury and the Mediterranean, 1886–1896 (London, 1965).

Though pioneering in many respects this work is not without ﬂaws. The prob-

lematic notion that Salisbury was somehow following a Palmerstonian tradition

apart, the wider signiﬁcance of the Mediterranean periphery is not always fully

integrated with the wider constellation of the Great Powers.

3 Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917

(Oxford, 1995).

4 For the emergence of this see E. Ingram, In Defence of British India: Great Britain

in the Middle East, 1775–1842 (London, 1984), though his argument of Britain

as a ‘dual monarchy’ seems far-fetched.

5 For this argument see Keith Neilson, ‘Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1914’

STICERD conference, who stresses the non-systemic aspects; also T. Otte,

Global Transformation: Britain, Great Power Politics and the China Question,

1894–1905 (forthcoming) which stresses the interaction between ‘systemic’ and

‘non-systemic’ factors.

6 For this consideration see my ‘ “It’s What Made Britain Great”: Reﬂections on

British Foreign Policy from Malplaquet to Maastricht’, in T. Otte (ed.), The

Makers of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt to Thatcher (Basingstoke and New York,

2002), 1–34.

7 C.J. Bartlett, ‘Statecraft, Power and Inﬂuence’, in C.J. Bartlett (ed.), Britain Pre-

eminent: Studies of British World Inﬂuence in the Nineteenth Century (London,

1969), 173–4.

8 This has not been fully appreciated by scholars of British foreign and imperial

policy. For the background see J.R. Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal

Party, 1857–1868 (New York, 2nd edn. 1976), 246–50; H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Dis-

raeli, Gladstone, and the Politics of Mid-Victorian Budgets’, Historical Journal,

22 (1979): 615–43; H. Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660–1870: The Foundations of

Control (London, 1973), 104–6; M. Wright, Treasury Control of the Civil Service,

1854–1874 (Oxford, 1969).

9 C.J. Bartlett, ‘The Mid-Victorian Reappraisal of Naval Policy’, in K. Bourne and

D.C. Watt (eds), Studies in International History: Essays Presented to W. Norton Medli-

cott (London, 1967), 189–208; J.F. Beeler, ‘One-Power-Standard?: Great Britain

and the Balance of Naval Power, 1860–80’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 15 (1992):

548–52; D.M. Schurman, Imperial Defence, 1868–1887 (London, 2000).

24 T.G. Otte

10 Cf. K.A.P. Sandiford, Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question, 1848–1864:

A Study in Diplomacy, Politics, and Public Opinion (Toronto, 1975).

11 W.E. Mosse, The Rise and Fall of the Crimean System, 1855–71: The Story of a Peace

Settlement (London, 1963). On the global nature of the Anglo-Russian struggle,

cf. also A. Lambert, The Crimean War: British Grand Strategy, 1853–6 (Manches-

ter, 1990), xvi–xxi, and 269–80.

12 G.J. Alder, British India’s Northern Frontier, 1865–95: A Study in Imperial Policy

(London, 1963), 38–57, 100–13 and 165–88.

13 W.E. Mosse, ‘The End of the Crimean System: England, Russia, and the Neu-

trality of the Black Sea, 1870–1’, Historical Journal, 4 (1961): 164–90.

14 W.N. Medlicott, The Congress of Berlin and After: A Diplomatic History of the Near

Eastern Settlement, 1878–80 (London, 2nd edn. 1963), 137–47; M. Swartz, The

Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, 1985),

82–103; R. Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875–1878 (Oxford, 1979),

403–51; J. Charmley, Splendid Isolation?: Britain and the Balance of Power,

1874–1914 (London, 1999), 145–62.

15 M. Cowling, ‘Lytton, the Cabinet, and the Russians, August to November 1878’,

English Historical Review, 85 (1961): 59–79; and A.P. Thornton, ‘British Policy in

Persia, 1858–90 (I)’, ibid., 69 (1954): 569–72, for the Herat Convention.

16 R.L. Greaves, Persia and the Defence of India, 1884–92 (London, 1959), 70–120;

D.R. Gillard, ‘Salisbury and the Defence of India, 1885–1902’, in Bourne and

Watt (eds), Studies in International History: Essays Presented to W. Norton Medlicott,

here esp. 246–8.

17 Lowe, Salisbury and the Mediterranean, passim; W.N. Medlicott, ‘The Mediter-

ranean Agreements of 1887’, Slavonic Review, 5 (1926): 71–4.

18 T.G. Otte, ‘ “Floating Downstream”?: Lord Salisbury and British Foreign

Policy, 1878–1902’, in T.G. Otte (ed.), The Makers of British Foreign Policy,

112–15; K.M. Wilson, ‘Constantinople or Cairo: Lord Salisbury and the Parti-

tion of the Ottoman Empire, 1886–1897’, in K.M. Wilson, Empire and Conti-

nent: Studies in British Foreign Policy from the 1880s to the First World War (London,

1987), 1–30.

19 G.N. Sanderson, England, Europe and the Upper Nile, 1882–1899 (Edinburgh,

1965); A.S. Kanya-Forstner, ‘French Africa Policy and the Anglo-French Agree-

ment of 5 August 1890’, Historical Journal, 12 (1969): 628–50; D.R. Gillard, ‘Sal-

isbury’s Africa Policy and the Heligoland Offer of 1890’, English Historical

Review, 85 (1960): 631–53; C.J. Lowe, ‘Anglo-Italian Differences over East

Africa and Their Effects on the Mediterranean Entente’, ibid., 81 (1966):

319–30; M.P. Hornik, ‘The Anglo-Belgian Agreement of 12 May 1894’, ibid., 62

(1942): 233–43; A.J.P. Taylor, ‘Prelude to Fashoda: The Question of the Upper

Nile, 1894–5’, ibid., 65 (1950): 52–80.

20 Otte, ‘ “Floating Downstream”?’, 116–17; J.A.S. Grenville, ‘Go&lstrok;uchowski,

Salisbury, and the Mediterranean Agreements, 1895–7’, Slavonic and East Euro-

pean Review, 36 (1958): esp. 353–5.

21 D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914

(Oxford, 1968), 20–2.

22 H.D. Traill, Central Government (London, 1881), 78–80.

23 Kimberley to Ripon (private), 6 Nov. 1893, Ripon Mss, British Library, Add.

Mss 43526.

24 Granville to Gladstone, 29 Oct. 1879, in A. Ramm (ed.), Gladstone–Granville Corre-

spondence, 1868–1876 (2 vols, London, 1952), vol. I, 351. For the above cf. N.S.

Johnson, ‘The Role of the Cabinet in the Making of Foreign Policy, 1885–1895’,

with special reference to Lord Salisbury’s second administration’ (D.Phil. thesis,

Oxford, 1970); V. Cromwell and Z.S. Steiner, ‘The FO before 1914: A Study in

Resistance’, in G. Sutherland (ed.), Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth Century

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1856–1914 25

Government (London, 1972), 167–94; K. Robbins, ‘The Foreign Secretary, the

Cabinet, Parliament and the Parties’, in F.H. Hinsley (ed.), British Foreign Policy

under Sir Edward Grey (Cambridge, 1977), 3–21; T.G. Otte, ‘Old Diplomacy:

Reﬂections on the FO before 1914’, in G. Johnson (ed.), The FO and British

Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London, 2004), 31–52.

25 Otte, ibid., 38–9.

26 There is no proper study of career patterns in the British diplomatic service in

this period. A useful discussion of ambassadorial appointments and the inﬂu-

ence of ambassadors is K. Neilson, ‘ “Only a d–d marionette”?: The Inﬂuence of

Ambassadors on British Foreign Policy’, in M.L. Dockrill and B.J.C. McKercher

(eds), Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy, 1890–1950

(Cambridge, 1996), 56–78.

27 E. Hertslet, FO List . . . for 1900 (London, 1900), 5–6; R.A. Jones, The Nineteenth

Century FO: An Administrative History (London, 1971), 81–2.

28 F.D. Munsell, The Unfortunate Duke: Henry Pelham Clinton, Fifth Duke of Newcastle,

1811–1864 (Columbia, MI, 1985), 244–5.

29 Russell to Newcastle, 7 Feb. 1861, and min. Palmerston, 3 Mar. 1861, in C.W.

Newbury (ed.), British Policy towards West Africa: Selected Documents, 1786–1874

(Oxford, 1965), nos V/18–19.

30 D.E. Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention (Cambridge, 1934), 75–7;

L.M. Penson, ‘The Foreign Policy of Lord Salisbury, 1878–80: The Problem of

the Ottoman Empire’, in A. Coville and H.W.V. Temperley (eds), Studies in

Anglo-French History (Cambridge, 1935), 125–42.

31 Sir Charles Dilke, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, was instrumental in forcing

the administration of Cyprus upon the Colonial Ofﬁce in 1880, cf. FO List 1879

(London, 1879); A. Cecil, ‘The FO’, in A.W. Ward and G.P. Gooch (eds), The

Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919 (3 vols, Cambridge, 1921–3),

vol. III, 608. For the Zambezi territories, cf. R.V. Kubicek, The Administration of

Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Ofﬁce (Durham, NC, 1969), 26.

32 T.G. Otte, ‘ “Wee-ah-Wee”?: Britain at Weihaiwei, 1898–1930’, in G. Kennedy

(ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 1900–2000: Inﬂuences and Actions

(London, 2005), 4–34.

33 R. Hyam, Elgin and Churchill at the Colonial Ofﬁce, 1905–1908: The Watershed of the

Empire-Commonwealth (London, 1968), 305–10.

34 There is still no proper modern biography of this important ofﬁcial, cf. R.B.

Mowat, The Life of Lord Pauncefote: First Ambassador to the US (London, 1929),

27–30; L. Wright, Julian Pauncefote and British Imperial Policy, 1855–1889

(Lanham, MD, 2002), 19–37.

35 Kubicek, Administration of Imperialism, 37–8. Another point of contact was of an

administrative nature. The 1905 Crowe–Hardinge reforms at the FO intro-

duced a number of innovations copied from the Colonial Ofﬁce, including a

General Registry and the famous ‘minute sheets’ that cover the despatches

received, cf. Otte, ‘Old Diplomacy’, 36–8.

36 Lord G. Hamilton, Parliamentary Reminiscences and Reﬂections, 1868 to 1885

(London, 1917), 68–9.

37 Reminiscences of Lord Kilbracken, GCB (London, 1931), 160–1.

38 Copies of Indian correspondence and memoranda can be found in the corre-

spondence and papers of the St. Petersburg embassy archives, TNA (PRO),

F[oreign] O[fﬁce Paper] 181.

39 C.P. Skrine and P. Nightingale, Macartney at Kashgar: New Light on British, Chinese

and Russian Activities in Sinkiang, 1890–1918 (Hong Kong and Oxford, 1987).

40 Baring’s position in India, however, was not an ofﬁcial one, but connected to

his uncle’s elevation to the viceroyalty, cf. R. Owen, Lord Cromer: Victorian Impe-

rialist and Edwardian Proconsul (Oxford, 2004), 56–67.

26 T.G. Otte

41 There were also six unsalaried posts. The Colonial Ofﬁce funded the consulate

on Tonga, while the Anglo-Egyptian administration of the Sudan paid for two

consular posts in Ethiopia. Chinde in Portuguese Africa was paid out of Nyasa-

land funds, cf. G.E.P. Hertslet (ed.), The FO List and Diplomatic and Consular

Year Book for 1914 (London, 1914), 30–52; also B.C. Busch, Britain and the

Persian Gulf, 1894–1914 (Berkeley, CA, 1967), 6–7 and 350–2.

42 A.P. Kaminsky, The India Ofﬁce, 1880–1910 (Westport, CT, 1986), 109.

43 See also the argument developed by Paul M. Kennedy concerning the longer

term roots of ‘appeasement’ as a foreign policy strategy, Paul M. Kennedy,

Strategy and Diplomacy, 1870–1945: Eight Studies (London, 1984), 13–39.

44 Godley to Curzon (private), 8 Nov. 1901, Curzon Mss, British Library Oriental

and India Ofﬁce Collection, Mss Eur.F.150. For the background see D.

McLean, Britain and Her Buffer State: The Collapse of the Persian Empire,

1890–1914 (London, 1979), 36.

45 J.V. Plass, England zwischen Russland und Deutschland, 1899–1907 (Hamburg,

1966), 45.

46 Selborne to Curzon, 24 Apr. 1903, as quoted in D. Dilks, Curzon in India (2 vols,

London, 1969), vol. I, 111; also Kaminsky, India Ofﬁce, 110.

47 Cf. L. Atherton, Top Secret: An Interim Guide to Recent Releases of Intelligence Records

at the Public Record Ofﬁce (London, s.a. [1993]); also L.P. Morris, ‘British Secret

Service Activity in Khorassan, 1887–1908’, Historical Journal, 27(1984): 657–75;

J. Ferris, ‘Before “Room 40”: The British Empire and Signals Intelligence,

1898–1914’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 12(1989): 431–55.

48 Cf. Ardagh to Sanderson, 8 Nov. 1900, and min. Sanderson, 9 Nov. 1900, HD

3/119.

49 Cf. T.G. Otte, ‘ “Not Proﬁcient in Table-Thumping”: Sir Ernest Satow at

Peking, 1900–1906’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 13 (2002): 175.

50 C. Andrew, ‘Codebreakers and FOs: The French, British and American

Experience’, in C. Andrew and D. Dilks (eds), The Missing Dimension: Govern-

ments and Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (London, 1984), 33–53; C. Andrew,

‘Secret Intelligence and British Foreign Policy, 1900–1939’, in C. Andrew and J.

Noakes (eds), Intelligence and International Relations, 1900–1945 (Exeter, 1987),

9–28; also J.W.M. Chapman, ‘British Use of “Dirty Tricks” in External Policy

Prior to 1914’, War in History, 9 (2001): 60–81, though this contains a number of

factual errors. A useful biography along popular lines of the ﬁrst head of SIS is

A. Judd, The Quest for ‘C’: Sir Mansﬁeld Cumming and the Founding of the British

Secret Service (London, 1999).

51 Cf. mins Crowe, 29 Apr. 1909, FO 371/673/16182, and 12 Feb. 1912, FO

371/1374/25576; also T.G. Otte, ‘Eyre Crowe and British Foreign Policy: A

Cognitive Map’, in T.G. Otte and C.A. Pagedas (eds), Personalities, War and

Diplomacy: Essays in International History (London, 1995), 24.

52 Field Marshal Lord Roberts complained that ‘he had to do for himself what an

intelligence department ought to have done for him’, cf. N.H. Gibbs, The

Origins of Imperial Defence (Oxford, 1955), 8–9.

53 R. Williams, Defending the Empire: The Conservative Party and British Defence Policy,

1899–1915 (New Haven, CT, and London, 1993), 19–20; J. Ehrman, Cabinet

Government and War, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, 1958), 27–30.

54 J.P. Mackintosh, ‘The Role of the Committee of Imperial Defence before

1914’, English Historical Review, 77 (1962): 490–503; N. d’Ombrain, War

Machinery and High Policy: Defence Administration in Peacetime Britain, 1902–14

(London, 1973).

55 Tenterden to Thomson (secret), 20 Apr. 1880, HD 3/58. On the close contacts

with the FO, cf. Lord E. Gleichen, A Guardsman’s Memories: A Book of Recollec-

tions (London, 1932), 140–3 and 180.

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1856–1914 27

56 J.A.S. Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The Close of the Nineteenth

Century (London, rev. edn. 1970 (pub.)), 24–54; P.T. Marsh, ‘Lord Salisbury

and the Ottoman Massacres’, Journal of British Studies, 9 (1972): 77–80.

57 Goschen to Devonshire, 6 Sept. 1895, as quoted in Z.S. Steiner, The FO and

Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (Cambridge, 1969), 53.

58 Memo. Altham, ‘Military Needs of the Empire in a War with France and

Russia’, 10 Aug. 1901, WO 106/48/E3/2.

59 Memo. Bertie, 20 June 1901, and ‘Anglo-Japanese Agreement’, 20 July 1901,

FO 46/547; and memo. Bertie, 22 July 1901, FO 17/1507; cf. I.H. Nish, Anglo-

Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907 (Westport, CT,

repr. 1976), 154–6.

60 Between 1889 and 1904 production costs for capital ships doubled and those

for cruisers quadrupled, cf. J.T. Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance,

Technology, and British Naval Policy (London, 1993 (pb)), 18–20; K. Neilson,

‘The Anglo-Japanese Alliance and British Strategic Foreign Policy, 1902–1914’.

61 Kerr to Selborne (secret), 2 Sept. 1901, in D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Crisis of British

Power: The Imperial and Naval Papers of the Second Earl of Selborne, 1895–1910

(London, 1990), p. 123; memo. Selborne, ‘Balance of Power in the Far East’, 4

Sept. 1901, CAB 37/58/81. For the background and impact cf. Z.S. Steiner,

‘Great Britain and the Creation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance’, Journal of

Modern History, 31 (1959): 27–36; also K. Neilson, ‘ “Greatly Exaggerated”: The

Myth of the Decline of Great Britain before 1914’, International History Review,

13 (1991): 695–725.

62 For a fuller discussion of this dynamic cf. T.G. Otte, Global Transformation,

Chapter 6; also, albeit somewhat mechanistic in its analysis, A.L. Friedberg,

‘Britain Faces the Burdens of Empire: The Financial Crisis of 1901–5’, War &

Society, 5 (1987): 15–37.

63 J.A.S. Grenville, ‘Great Britain and the Isthmian Canal, 1898–1901’, American

Historical Review, 61(1955): 69.

64 For this argument cf. J.M. Goudswaard, Some Aspects of the End of Britain’s ‘Splen-

did Isolation’, 1898–1904 (Rotterdam, 1952), 92–3; M.E. Howard, The Continental

Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars

(Harmondsworth, Mdx, 1974 (pub.)), 92–3.

65 Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 223–6; I.H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance,

229–44; Otte, Global Transformation, Chapter 7.

66 P. Towle, ‘The Russo-Japanese War and the Defence of India’, Military Affairs,

44(1980): 114–15; useful, albeit somewhat rigid, K.M. Wilson, ‘The Anglo-

Japanese Alliance of August 1905 and the Defending of India: A Case of the

Worst Case Scenario’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 21(1993):

324–56.

67 Lansdowne to Hardinge, 4 Sept. 1905, Hardinge Mss, Cambridge University

Library, vol. 7; cf. R.A. Esthus, Double Eagle and Rising Sun: The Russians and

Japanese at Portsmouth in 1905 (Durham, NC, 1986), 144–5.

68 Grey to Spring-Rice, 22 Dec. 1905, as quoted in K. Neilson, ‘ “Control the Whirl-

wind”: Sir Edward Grey as Foreign secretary, 1906–1916’, in T.G. Otte (ed.), The

Makers of British Foreign Policy, 130.

69 For the background, cf. B.J. Williams, ‘The Strategic Background to the Anglo-

Russian Convention of August 1907’, Historical Journal, 9 (1966): 360–73;

Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 267–88; also S.E. Koss, John Morley at the India

Ofﬁce (New Haven, CT, 1969), 111–17. For the military and naval talks with the

Japanese, cf. Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 353–8.

70 T.G. Otte, ‘The Elusive Balance: British Foreign Policy and the French Entente

before the First World War’, in A. Sharp and G. Stone (eds), Anglo-French

Relations in the Twentieth Century: Rivalry and Cooperation (London, 2000), 11–35.

28 T.G. Otte

The extent to which Grey deviated from Lansdowne’s seemingly more even-

handed approach remains the subject of some debate. For a critical view of

Grey, cf. J. Charmley, Splendid Isolation?: Britain and the Balance of Power

(London, 1999), 332; K.M. Wilson, The Policy of the Entente: Essays on the

Determinants of British Foreign Policy, 1904–1914 (Cambridge, 1985), 86–99. For

interpretations stressing the continuity between Lansdowne and Grey, cf. Z.S.

Steiner and K. Neilson, Britain and the Origins of the First World War (Basingstoke

and New York, 2nd edn. 2003), 35–43; T.G. Otte, ‘ “Almost a Law of Nature”?:

Sir Edward Grey, the FO, and the Balance of Power in Europe, 1905–12’, in

B.J.C. McKercher and E. Goldstein (eds), Power and Stability: British Foreign

Policy, 1865–1965 (London, 2003), esp. 80–88.

71 P.M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London,

1990), 444–7; J. Steinberg, ‘The Novelle of 1908: Necessities and Choices in the

Anglo-German Naval Arms Race’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th

ser., 21 (1971): 25–43; A.J. Marder, From Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The RN in

the Fisher Era, vol. I, The Road to War (London, 1961), 105–85.

72 Neilson, ‘Control the Whirlwind’, 130–1; Otte, ‘Almost a Law of Nature’,

99–102; Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 114–16.

73 The argument developed by Wilson, Policy of the Ententes, 106–8 and 115–18,

and unreﬂectedly taken over by N. Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998),

55–81.

74 Steiner and Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 83.

75 J. Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia and the Final Struggle for Central Asia,

1907–1914 (London, 2002), 175–96.

76 D. McLean, Britain and Her Buffer State: The Collapse of the Persian Empire,

1890–1914 (London, 1979), 111–16.

77 Nicolson to Buchanan (private), 21 Apr. 1914, as quoted in Steiner and

Neilson, Britain and the Origins, 99. The state of Anglo-Russian relations in 1914

is comprehensively treated in Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 333–40.

78 Wilson, Policy of the Entente, 74–84, 95–9 and 115–20; Wilson, ‘Imperial Interests

in the British Decision for War, 1914: The Defence of India in Central Asia’,

Review of International Studies, 10 (1984): 189–203; and Wilson, (ed.), British

Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Policy: From Crimean War to First World War

(London, 1987), 172–97. This seems to be Wilson’s idée ﬁxe, for he has recently

charged the Aberdeen coalition of 1853 with deciding on war in the East

(against Russia) in order to avoid confronting France in the West (over

Belgium), cf. Wilson, Problems and Possibilities: Exercises in Statesmanship,

1814–1918 (Stroud, 2003), 69.

79 K.M. Wilson, ‘The Struggle for Persia: Sir G. Clerk’s Memorandum of 21 [recte

23] July 1914 on Anglo-Russian Relations in Persia’, Proceedings of the 1988 Inter-

national Conference on Middle Eastern Studies (Leeds, 1988), 290–334, and Wilson,

‘Britain’ in Wilson, (ed.), Decisions for War, 1914 (London, 1995), here 184–7.

80 Min. Grey, 18 Aug. 1914, on memo. Clerk, ‘Anglo-Russian Relations in Persia’,

23 July 1914, FO 371/2076/33484.

81 Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar, 289–90.

82 Ibid., 340.

83 Otte, ‘Old Diplomacy’, 42–3.

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1856–1914 29

2 The Foreign Ofﬁce and the

defence of empire, 1919–1939

Keith Neilson

At the end of the First World War, four European empires – the

Austro–Hungarian, the German, the Ottoman and the Russian – collapsed.

At the same time, Japan and the United States emerged as major players

on the world stage. To complicate matters further, ideologies hostile to

Western democracy – successively Bolshevism, Fascism and Naziism –

sprang up, each asserting that it held the keys to the future. Equally

important, the verities of pre-war international relations were under siege.

Alliances, secret (or ‘old’) diplomacy and arms races were held to be

responsible for the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. Finally, the principle of

national self-determination was held to be an essential element of peace.

There was even an attack on the concept of empire itself, although most

in the British establishment believed that the time for imperial retreat

could be safely put off into the indeﬁnite future.

British Imperial Defence

would have to be formulated in an environment completely different from

that of 1914.

The role of Foreign Ofﬁce (FO) in determining British strategic foreign

policy had also altered. Before the war, the FO had been a central compo-

nent in the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), created in 1902 as a

nexus between the various departments of state concerned with defence

policy.

And, with respect to foreign policy itself, the FO was supreme prior

to 1914, despite efforts by groups – both parliamentary and extra-parliament-

ary – to push the policy in various directions. After the war, the situation had

changed. The machinery of government had altered.

The increase of prime

ministerial power was reﬂected in the growth of the Cabinet secretariat and

the creation of Lloyd George’s ‘garden suburb’, where voices advocating

alternate foreign policies would have an opportunity to oppose the FO.

Further, other departments of state – particularly, the Treasury – then

claimed a greater voice in foreign-policy issues, particularly those that

involved ﬁnances.

Seriously though, the FO’s own authority was diminished

by attacks made on it during the war, although efforts were made under

Curzon and, later, Austen Chamberlain to restore its pre-war lustre.

All these considered, determining the shape of the new world order was

the ﬁrst order of business for the FO after the First World War. Much of

this took place at the Paris Peace Conference.

Here, British policy makers

made a number of decisions that would affect imperial defence through-

out the interwar era. While the various peace treaties were each shaped by

particular concerns, there were a number of verities that affected them all.

The ﬁrst was that there should be no more war. This was to be achieved by

several means, including the liberation of national minorities and disarma-

ment. Those disputes that still existed were to be resolved by the means

provided by the League of Nations, itself a product of the peace.

This was the ideal.

However, the circumstances of 1919 and the

utopian aims of the peace conference were not always compatible. One

dilemma for the FO was how to reconcile its professed support for national

minorities (and their aspirations for independence) with the needs of

imperial defence. This was particularly acute with respect to the border-

lands of the former Tsarist state.

Some of these problems were not new.

In addition to pre-1914 concerns about the Russian threat to India, during

the war itself the British had spent a good deal of time ensuring that the

‘jewel of empire’ was secure against all comers.

This concern was tied to

the need to guarantee that the post-war settlement would be favourable to

the empire.

Such considerations had been particularly pressing during

the bleak months of 1917 and 1918 when Russia’s collapse had made it

seem possible that a military stalemate, if not outright defeat, was the likely

outcome of the First World War and that Germany might gain territories in

the East that would offset any possible losses she might incur in the West.

While this did not come to pass, even after the guns stopped ﬁring the

British remained very much concerned about the fate of those former

Tsarist territories that bordered the British Empire.

This involved two things: whether such territories would be re-absorbed

into a new Soviet state, allowing for a recrudescence of the nineteenth

century Russian physical threat to the empire and whether Soviet Russia,

as a purveyor of dangerous thoughts, would be successful in undermining

the British Empire by means of ideological subversion. Under Lord

Curzon, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1919 to

1924, Britain attempted to create a cordon sanitaire against Bolshevik

expansion.

In Europe, this took the form of supporting the independ-

ence of the Baltic States, Poland and Eastern Europe generally. In the

Baltic, the British wished for stability, a situation in which the Baltic and

the Scandinavian states would ensure their own security by means of coop-

eration, all the while allowing British sea power to operate freely in the

Baltic itself.

In Eastern Europe, where British power could not act,

London promoted security through loans and economic penetration.

More important to the empire, and crucial to imperial defence, was the

fate of the southern tier of states in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Here,

Curzon wished to pursue a forward policy, achieving the long-term goal of

defending India by creating a British crescent stretching from India

through the Middle East to Egypt. This was not a simple task.

There were

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1919–1939 31