Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

2 John Darwin, ‘Imperialism in Decline? Tendencies in British Imperial Policy

between the Wars’, Historical Journal, 23 (1980): 657–79; P.J. Marshall, ‘Imperial

Britain’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 23 (1995): 395–426.

3 For an elaboration of these ideas, see Keith Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia and

the Collapse of the Versailles Settlement, 1919–1939 (Cambridge, 2005). For an

excellent study that analyzes the changed circumstances with regard to stra-

tegic foreign policy after the war, see John Robert Ferris, Men, Money, and

Diplomacy. The Evolution of British Strategic Foreign Policy, 1919–1926 (Ithaca, NY,

1989).

4 Nicholas d’Ombrain, War Machinery and High Policy. Defence administration in

peacetime Britain 1902–1914 (Oxford, 1973) and F.A. Johnson, Defence by

Committee: The British Committee of Imperial Defence, 1885–1959 (Oxford, 1960).

5 Kathleen Burk, ed., War and the State. The Transformation of British Government,

1914–1919 (London, 1982).

6 John F. Naylor, A Man and An Institution. Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet

Secretariat and the custody of Cabinet secrecy (Cambridge, 1984); John Turner,

‘The Formation of Lloyd George’s “Garden Suburb”: “Fabian-Like Milnerite

Penetration”?’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977): 165–84; ibid., Lloyd George’s

Secretariat (Cambridge, 1980).

7 George Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy 1906–1959 (Oxford, 2000),

170–4, 212–16.

8 Roberta M. Warman, ‘The Erosion of FO Inﬂuence in the Making of Foreign

Policy, 1916–1918’, Historical Journal, 15 (1972): 133–59; Alan J. Sharp, ‘The FO

in Eclipse 1919–22’, History, 61 (1976): 198–218; G.H. Bennett, ‘Lloyd George,

Curzon and the Control of British Foreign Policy 1919–22’, Australian Journal

of Politics and History, 45 (1999): 467–82; Gaynor Johnson, ‘Curzon, Lloyd

George and the Control of British Foreign Policy, 1919–22: A Reassessment’,

Diplomacy & Statecraft, 11 (2000): 49–71; B.J.C. McKercher, ‘Old Diplomacy and

New: The FO and Foreign Policy, 1919–1939’, in Michael Dockrill and Brian

McKercher, eds, Diplomacy and World Power: Studies in British Foreign Policy,

1890–1950 (Cambridge, 1996).

9 For British policy at Paris, see Erik Goldstein, Winning the Peace. British Diplo-

matic Strategy, Peace Planning, and the Paris Peace Conference 1916–1920 (Oxford,

1991). Two recent collections introduce the literature, set the context and add

to Goldstein: Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman and Elisabeth Glaser,

eds, The Treaty of Versailles. A Reassessment after 75 Years (Washington, DC and

Cambridge, 1998) and Michael Dockrill and John Fisher, eds, The Paris Peace

Conference, 1919. Peace without Victory? (Basingstoke and New York, 2001).

10 On the League, and the differing British views of what it meant, see G.

Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (London, 1972),

F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations. Its Life and Times: 1920–1946 (Leicester,

1986); Peter J. Yearwood, ‘ “Read Securities against New Wars”: Ofﬁcial British

Thinking and the Origins of the League of Nations, 1914–19’, Diplomacy &

Statecraft, 9 (1998): 83–109; George Egerton, ‘Collective Security as Political

Myth: Liberal Internationalism and the League of Nations in Politics and

History’, International History Review, 5 (1983): 496–524; ibid., ‘Conservative

Internationalism: British Approaches to International Organization and the

Creation of the League of Nations’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 5 (1994): 1–20.

For an excellent interpretative essay, see Zara Steiner, ‘The League of Nations

and the Quest for Security’, in R. Ahmann, A.M. Birke and M. Howard, eds,

The Quest for Stability. Problems of West European Security 1918–1957 (Oxford,

1993), 35–70.

11 For some early efforts by the League and the British attitude towards its func-

tioning, see Peter J. Yearwood, ‘ “Consistently with Honour”: Great Britain, the

42 K. Neilson

League of Nations and the Corfu Crisis of 1923’, Journal of Contemporary History,

21 (1986): 559–79; P.J. Beck, ‘From the Geneva Protocol to the Greco-Bulgar-

ian dispute: the development of the Baldwin government’s policy towards the

peacekeeping role of the League of Nations, 1924–1925’, British Journal of Inter-

national Studies, 6 (1980): 52–68; David Carlton, ‘Great Britain and the League

Council Crisis of 1926’, Historical Journal, 11 (1968): 345–64.

12 Keith Neilson, ‘ “That elusive entity British policy in Russia”: the Impact of

Russia on British Policy at the Paris Peace Conference’, in Dockrill and Fisher,

eds, Paris Peace Conference, 67–103.

13 For the pre-war concern, in addition to the material cited above in the chapter

by Thomas Otte, see R.A. Johnson, ‘ “Russians at the Gates of India”? Planning

the Defence of India, 1885–1900’, Journal of Military History, 67 (2003):

697–743. For the matter during the First World War, Keith Neilson, ‘ “For

diplomatic, economic, strategic and telegraphic reasons: British imperial

defence, the Middle East and India, 1914–18’, in Greg Kennedy and Keith

Neilson, eds, Far-Flung Lines. Essays on Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald

Mackenzie Schurman (London and Portland, OR, 1997), 103–23; Benjamin

Schwartz, ‘Divided Attention: Britain’s Perception of a German Threat to Her

Eastern Position in 1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28 (1993): 103–22.

14 V.H. Rothwell, British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy 1914–1918 (Oxford, 1971)

and Lorna Jaffe, The Decision to Disarm Germany (London, 1985).

15 Brock Millman, Pessimism and British War Policy 1916–1918 (London, and Port-

land, OR, 2001), 112–54; 199–240; ibid., ‘A Counsel of Despair: British Strategy

and War Aims, 1917–18’, Journal of Contemporary History, 36 (2001): 241–70.

16 For British policy, generally towards Soviet Russia in the early period, see

R.H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet Relations 1917–1921 (3 vols; Princeton, NJ,

1961–1973). For parallel studies of Soviet policy that puts British actions in the

Soviet perspective, see two monographs by Richard K. Debo, Revolution and

Survival. The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia 1917–18 (Toronto, ON, and Buffalo,

NY, 1979) and Survival and Consolidation. The Foreign Policy of Soviet Russia

1918–1921 (Montreal, CA, and Kingston, ON, 1992).

17 See G.H. Bennett, British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919–24

(Basingstoke and New York, 1995), 41–60.

18 For Poland, see K. Lundgreen-Nielsen, The Polish Problem at the Paris Peace

Conference. A Study in the Politics of the Great Powers and the Poles, 1918–1920

(Odense, 1979) and Edgar Anderson, ‘The British Policy Toward the Baltic

States 1918–1920’, Journal of Central European Affairs, 19 (1959): 276–89. For Scan-

dinavia and the Baltic States, the articles by Patrick Salmon, ‘British Security

Interests in Scandinavia and the Baltic 1918–39’ and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen,

‘Bridges and Barrier, Pawns and Actors. The Baltic States in East-West Relations

in the 1920s’ all in John Hiden and Aleksandr Loit, eds, The Baltic in International

Relations between the Two World Wars (Stockholm, 1988), 113–36, 431–42; Markku

Ruotsila, ‘The Churchill-Mannerheim Collaboration in the Russian Intervention,

1919–1920’, Slavonic and East European Review, 80 (2002): 1–20. Essential are

Olavi Hovi, The Baltic Area in British Policy 1918–1921. Vol. I: From the Compiègne

Armistice to the Implementation of the Versailles Treaty (Helsinki, 1980) and the work

of Ea Sundbäck: ‘ “A Convenient Buffer between Scandinavia and Russia” Great

Britain, Scandinavia and the Birth of Finland after the First World War’,

Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 42 (1994): 355–75 and Finland in British Baltic

Policy. British political and economic interests regarding Finland in the Aftermath of the

First World War, 1918–1925 (Helsinki, 2001).

19 For an introduction, see Gábor Bátonyi, Britain and Central Europe 1918–1931

(Oxford, 1999); for some speciﬁcs, see Gerald Protheroe, ‘Sir George Clerk

and the Struggle for British Inﬂuence in Central Europe’, Diplomacy &

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1919–1939 43

Statecraft, 12 2001: 39–64; Gyorgy Peter, ‘Central Bank Diplomacy: Montagu

Norman and Central Europe’s Monetary Reconstruction after World War I’,

Contemporary European History, 3 (1992): 233–58, Anne Orde, ‘Baring Brothers,

the Bank of England, the British Government and the Czechoslovak State Loan

of 1922’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991): 27–40.

20 John Fisher, Curzon and British Imperialism in the Middle East 1916–19 (London,

and Portland, OR, 1999) sets the wider context; see also ibid., ‘ “On The Glacis

of India”: Lord Curzon and British Policy in the Caucasus, 1919’, Diplomacy &

Statecraft, 8 (1997): 50–82; David Kelly, ‘End of the Great Game: British Inter-

vention in Russia’s Southern Borderlands and the Soviet Response’, Journal of

Slavic Military Studies, 13 (2000): 84–100; L.P. Morris, ‘British Secret Missions in

Turkestan, 1918–19’, Journal of Contemporary History, 12 (1977): 363–79.

21 What follows is based on Keith Jeffery, ‘Sir Henry Wilson and the Defence of

the British Empire, 1918–22’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,

5 (1977): 270–94; ibid., The British Army and the Crisis of Empire 1918–1922

(Manchester, 1984).

22 Bennett, British Foreign Policy, 60–75.

23 Houshang Sabahi, British Policy in Persia 1918–1925 (London, and Portland,

OR, 1990), 157–200. For the earlier policy in Persia, see Brock Millman, ‘The

Problem with Generals: Military Observers and the Origins of the Intervention

in Russia and Persia, 1917–18’, Journal of Contemporary History, 33 (1998):

291–320.

24 See Manoug J. Somakian, Empires in Conﬂict. Armenia and the Great Powers

1895–1920 (London and New York, 1995). The British did continue to attempt

to preserve trade with the area, but this was ended when it was re-absorbed by

the Bolsheviks; see Dennis Ogden, ‘Britain and Soviet Georgia, 1921–22’,

Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1988): 245–58.

25 M.V. Glenny, ‘The Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement, March 1921’, Journal of

Contemporary History, 5 (1970): 63–82. For the difﬁculties involved, see the

account of the Genoa Conference in Anne Orde, British Policy and European

Reconstruction after the First World War (Cambridge, 1990), 194–207.

26 What follows, except where otherwise noted, is informed by Orest Babij, ‘The

Making of Imperial Defence Policy in Britain, 1926–1934’, unpublished DPhil

thesis, Oxford, 2002, pp. 25–66 and Keith Neilson, ‘ “Pursued by a Bear”:

British Estimates of Soviet Military Strength and Anglo-Soviet Relations,

1922–1939’, Canadian Journal of History, 27 (1993): 194–206.

27 Richard S. Grayson, Austen Chamberlain and the Commitment to Europe. British

Foreign Policy 1924–29 (London, and Portland, OR, 1997), 253–58.

28 Minutes, 223rd meeting of the CID, 17 March 1927, Cab[inet Ofﬁce] 2/5.

29 Uriel Dann, ‘British Persian Gulf Concepts in the Light of Emerging National-

ism in the Late 1920s’, in Uriel Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East

1919–1939 (New York and London, 1988), 50–68.

30 Neilson, Britain, Soviet Russia, chapter 1.

31 For the DRC and its context, see Keith Neilson, ‘The Defence Requirements

Sub-Committee, British Strategic Foreign Policy, Neville Chamberlain and the

Path to Appeasement’, English Historical Review, 118 (2003): 651–84.

32 Committee of Imperial Defence. Defence Requirements Sub-Committee

Report’, DRC 14, Hankey, Chatﬁeld, Ellington, Fisher, Montgomery-Massing-

berd and Vansittart, 28 Feb. 1934, Cab 16/109.

33 Milan Hauner, ‘The Soviet Threat to Afghanistan and India 1938–1940’,

Modern Asian Studies, 15 (1982): 287–309.

34 For Indian strength, see Pradeep Barua, ‘Strategies and Doctrines of Imperial

Defence: Britain and India, 1919–45’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth

History, 25 (1997): 240–66. This runs counter to the commonly held belief that

44 K. Neilson

India was a drag on British defence, for which see Michael Howard, The Contin-

ental Commitment: The Dilemma for British Defence Policy in the Two World Wars

(London, 1972) and Brian Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World

Wars (Oxford, 1980), 267–70.

35 For the context, see John Darwin, ‘An Undeclared Empire: The British in the

Middle East, 1918–39’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27

(1999): 159–76.

36 Steven Morewood, ‘Protecting the Jugular Vein of Empire: The Suez Canal in

British Defence Strategy, 1919–1941’, War and Society, 10, 1 (1992), pp. 81–107;

Keith Neilson, ‘The Baghdad to Haifa Railway: the Culmination of Railway

Planning for Imperial Defence East of Suez’ in Thomas Otte and Keith

Neilson, eds, The Path of Empire: Railways in International Politics, 1860–1943

(London, forthcoming).

37 For British policy towards Egypt, see John Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle

East. Imperial policy in the aftermath of war 1918–1922 (London and Basingstoke,

1981); ibid., ‘An Undeclared Empire: The British in the Middle East, 1918–39’,

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 27, 2 (1999), pp. 159–76; Gabriel

R. Warburg, ‘Sudan, Egypt and Britain, 1919–1924’, in Dann, ed., Great Powers

in the Middle East, pp. 71–90.

38 Steven Morewood, ‘Appeasement from Strength: The Making of the 1936

Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 7, 3

(1996), pp. 530–62.

39 For this, see Steven Morewood, ‘Anglo-Italian Rivalry in the Mediterranean and

Middle East, 1935–1940’, in Robert Boyce and Esmonde M. Robertson, eds,

Paths to War. New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (London, 1989),

pp. 167–98; ibid., The British Defence of Egypt 1935–1940. Conﬂict and Crisis in the

Eastern Mediterranean (London and New York, 2005).

40 For analysis of all these problems, see David Omissi, ‘The Mediterranean and

the Middle East in British Global Strategy, 1935–39’, Michael J. Cohen, ‘British

Strategy in the Middle East in the Wake of the Abyssinian Crisis, 1936–39 and

Paul Harris, ‘Egypt: Defence Plans’, all in Michael J. Cohen and Martin Kolin-

sky, eds, Britain and the Middle East in the 1930s (London, 1993), pp. 3–20,

21–40 and 61–78 respectively. Also important is Lawrence Pratt, East of Malta,

West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis, 1936–1939 (Cambridge, 1975).

41 Bennett, British Foreign Policy, pp. 76–94.

42 John R. Ferris, ‘ “Far Too Dangerous a Gamble”? British Intelligence and Policy

during the Chanak Crisis, September-October 1922’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 14,

2 (2003), 139–84; A.L. Macﬁe, ‘British Intelligence and the Turkish National

Movement, 1919–22’, Middle Eastern Studies, 37, 1 (2001), 27–46; ibid., ‘British

Views of the Turkish National Movement in Anatolia, 1919–22’, Middle Eastern

Studies, 38, 3 (2002), 27–46; John Fisher, ‘The Interdepartmental Committee on

Eastern Unrest and British Responses to Bolshevik and other intrigues against

the Empire in the 1920s’, Journal of Asian History, 34, 1 (2000), pp. 1–34, and

Selçuk Esenbel, ‘Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Trans-

national Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945’, American Historical Review,

109, 4 (2004), pp. 1140–70.

43 D. Walder, The Chanak Affair (London, 1969); Philip G. Wigley, Canada and the

Transition to Commonwealth. British-Canadian Relations 1917–1926 (Cambridge,

1977), pp. 160–72; Michael L. Dockrill and J. Douglas Goold, Peace without

Promise. Britain and the Peace Conferences 1919–23 (London, 1981), pp. 226–35.

44 Dockrill and Goold, Peace without Promise, pp. 236–52; Bennett, British Foreign

Policy, pp. 89–94.

45 For this, see Brock Millman, The Ill-Made Alliance. Anglo-Turkish Relations

1939–1940 (Montreal and Kingston, ON, 1998), pp. 69–85.

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1919–1939 45

46 Ibid., pp. 162–293.

47 Ian Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires

1894–1907 (London, 1966) remains the best study. Also important is ibid.,

‘Origins of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In the Shadow of the Dreibund’, in

Phillips Payson O’Brien, ed., The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922 (London

and New York, 2004), pp. 8–25.

48 Keith Neilson, ‘The Anglo-Japanese Alliance and British strategic foreign

policy, 1902–1914’, in O’Brien, ed., Anglo-Japanese Alliance, pp. 48–63.

49 Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar. British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917

(Oxford, 1995).

50 Robert Joseph Gowen, ‘British Legerdemain at the 1911 Imperial Conference:

The Dominions, Defense Planning, and the Renewal of the Anglo-Japanese

Alliance’, Journal of Modern History, 52, 3 (1980), pp. 385–413.

51 I.H. Nish, ‘Japan and China, 1914–1916’, in F.H. Hinsley, ed., British Foreign

Policy under Sir Edward Grey (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 452–65; ibid., Alliance in

Decline. A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908–23 (London, 1972), pp.

115–262; Robert Joseph Gowen, ‘Great Britain and the Twenty-One Demands

of 1915: Cooperation versus Effacement’, Journal of Modern History, 43, 1

(1971), pp. 76–106; Peter Lowe, Great Britain and Japan 1911–1915: a study of

British far eastern policy (London, 1969); ibid., ‘The British Empire and the

Anglo-Japanese Alliance 1911–1915’, History, 54, 1969, pp. 212–25.

52 Keith Neilson, ‘ “Unbroken Thread”: Japan, Maritime Power and British Impe-

rial Defence, 1920–32’, in Greg Kennedy, ed., British Naval Strategy East of Suez,

1900–2000. Inﬂuences and actions (London and New York, 2005), pp. 62–89;

John Fisher, ‘ “Backing the Wrong Horse”: Japan in British Middle Eastern

Policy 1914–18’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 21, 2 (1998), pp. 60–74.

53 On Japan in the naval war, J. Charles Schencking, ‘Navalism, naval expansion

and war. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Japanese Navy’, in O’Brien, ed.,

Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 122–39; Timothy D. Saxon, ‘Anglo-Japanese Naval Coop-

eration, 1914–1918’, Naval War College Review, 53, 1 (2000), pp. 62–92. For the

broader aspects, V.H. Rothwell, ‘The British Government and Japanese Military

Assistance 1914–1918’, History, 56 (1971), pp. 35–45 and Yoichi Hirama, ‘The

Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the First World War’, in Ian Gow, Yoichi Hirama

and John Chapman, eds, The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000.

Volume III: The Military Dimension (Basingstoke and New York, 2003), pp.

51–70.

54 J. Kenneth McDonald, ‘Lloyd George and the Search for a Postwar Naval

Policy, 1919’, in A.J.P. Taylor, ed., Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London, 1971),

pp. 191–222.

55 Nish, Alliance in Decline, pp. 310–13.

56 See Michael G. Fry, Illusions of Security. North Atlantic Diplomacy 1918–22

(Toronto, ON, and Buffalo, NY, 1972), pp. 121–53.

57 For Balfour’s thinking, Jason Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International

Thought of a Conservative Statesman (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 238–52.

58 There is a large body of work on the Singapore strategy. Two reviews summa-

rize much of the literature: Malcolm H. Murfett, ‘Living in the Past: A Critical

Re-examination of the Singapore Naval Strategy, 1918–1941’, War and Society,

11, 1 (1993), pp. 73–103 and ibid., ‘Reflections on an Enduring Theme: The

“Singapore Strategy” at Sixty’, in Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, eds, Sixty

Years On. The Fall of Singapore Revisited (Singapore, 2002), pp. 3–28. In addi-

tion, there are some articles that throw light on the topic: Galen Roger

Perras, ‘ “Our Position in the Far East would be Stronger without this Unsatis-

factory Commitment”: Britain and the Reinforcement of Hong Kong, 1941’,

Canadian Journal of History, 30, 2 (1995), pp. 231–59; Ian Cowman, ‘Defence

46 K. Neilson

of the Malay Barrier? The Place of the Philippines in Admiralty Naval War

Planning, 1925–1941’, War in History, 3, 4 (1996), pp. 398–417; ibid., ‘Main

Fleet to Singapore? Churchill, the Admiralty, and Force Z’, Journal of Strategic

Studies, 18, 1 (1995), pp. 79–93; Christopher Bell, ‘ “Our Most Exposed

Outpost”: Hong Kong and British Far Eastern Strategy, 1921–1941’, Journal of

Military History, 60, 1 (1996), pp. 61–88 and, most recently, ibid., ‘The “Singa-

pore Strategy” and the Deterrence of Japan: Winston Churchill, the Admiralty

and the Dispatch of Force Z’ English Historical Review, 116, 467 (2001), pp.

604–34. There is a useful account in Malcolm H. Murfett, John N. Miksic,

Brian P. Farrell, Chiang Ming Shun, Between Two Ocean: A Military History of

Singapore from First Settlement to Final British Withdrawal (Oxford, 1999), pp.

145–74. In addition, Christopher Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy

between the Wars (London, 2000) and Ong Chit Chung, Operation Matador.

Britain’s War Plans against the Japanese 1918–1941 (Singapore, 1997), put the

subject into context.

59 The best introduction to the Washington Conference is the issue of Diplomacy

and Statecraft, 4, 3 (1993) edited by Erik Goldstein and John Maurer, which is

devoted to the topic. For Canada, see Fry, Illusions of Security, pp. 154–86.

60 Nish, Alliance in Decline, pp. 368–82.

61 J. Kenneth McDonald, ‘The Washington Conference and the Naval Balance of

Power, 1921–2’, in John B. Hattendorf and Robert S. Jordan, eds, Maritime

Strategy and the Balance of Power. Britain and America in the Twentieth Century

(London, 1989), pp. 189–213.

62 The Treasury was unable to control cost until the late 1920s; see John Ferris,

‘Treasury Control, the Ten Year Rule and British Service Policies, 1919–1924’,

Historical Journal, 30 (1987), pp. 359–83. For the Soviet threat, see Babij, ‘Impe-

rial Defence Policy’, pp. 37–59; Antony Best, British Intelligence and the Japanese

Challenge in Asia, 1914–1941 (Basingstoke and New York, 2002), pp. 49–69.

63 Neilson, ‘Unbroken Thread’, pp. 73–5.

64 Foreign Relations in Relations to Russia and Japan’, CID 710-B, Tyrrell (PUS),

27 July 1926, Cab 4/15.

65 Edmund S.K. Fung, ‘The Sino-British Rapprochement, 1927–1931’, Modern

Asian Studies, 17, 1 (1983), pp. 79–105; ibid., The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat:

Britain’s South China Policy, 1924–1931 (Oxford, 1991).

66 Dick Richardson, The Evolution of British Disarmament Policy in the 1920s

(London and New York, 1989) is the best study, although rather partisan.

67 David Omissi, ‘Technology and Repression: Air Control in Palestine 1922–36’,

Journal of Strategic Studies, 13, 4 (1990), 41–63; ibid., Air Power and Colonial

Control: The RAF 1919–1939 (Manchester, 1990); Charles Townshend, ‘Civil-

ization and “Frightfulness”: Air Control in the Middle East Between the Wars’,

in Chris Wrigley, ed., War Diplomacy and Politics. Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor

(London, 1986), pp. 142–62. More generally, see Philip Towle, Philip, ‘British

Security and Disarmament Policy in Europe in the 1920s’, in R. Ahmann, A.M.

Birke and M. Howard, eds, The Quest for Stability. Problems of West European Secur-

ity 1918–1957 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 127–53.

68 For the Geneva Conference, see Tadashi Kuramatsu, ‘The Geneva Naval Con-

ference of 1927: The British Preparation for the Conference, December 1926

to June 1927’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 19 (1996), pp. 104–21; ibid., ‘Viscount

Cecil, Winston Churchill and the Geneva Naval Conference of 1927: Si vis

pacem para pacem vs si vis pacem para bellum’, in T.G. Otte and Constantine A.

Pagedas, eds, Personalities, War and Diplomacy: Essays in International History

(London, 1997), pp. 105–27; Babij, ‘Imperial Defence Policy’, pp. 70–83.

69 Orest Babij, ‘The Second Labour Government and British Maritime Security,

1929–1931’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 6, 3 (1995), pp. 645–71; Orest Babij, ‘The

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1919–1939 47

48 K. Neilson

RN and the Defence of the British Empire, 1928–1934’, in Neilson and

Kennedy, eds, Far-Flung Lines, pp. 171–89.

70 Christopher Thorne, ‘The Shanghai Crisis of 1932: The Basis of British Policy’,

American Historical Review, 75, 6 (1975), pp. 1616–39; ibid., The Limits of Foreign

Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–33 (New York, 1973)

and Ian Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of

Nations, 1931–33 (London, 1993) set the situation and the British response.

71 The effort to do so is the theme of Greg Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic

Relations and the Far East 1933–1939 (London, 2002).

72 Greg Kennedy, ‘Symbol of Imperial Defence: The Role of Singapore in British

and American Far Eastern Strategic Relations, 1933–1941’, in Farrell and

Hunter, eds, Sixty Years On, pp. 42–67.

73 Neilson, ‘Defence Requirements Sub-Committee’, pp. 665–9.

74 Greg Kennedy, ‘ “Rat in Power”: Neville Chamberlain and the Creation of

British Foreign Policy, 1931–1939’, in T.G. Otte, ed., The Makers of British

Foreign Policy: From Pitt to Thatcher (Basingstoke and New York, 2002), pp.

173–95; ibid., ‘Neville Chamberlain and Strategic Relations with the US during

his Chancellorship’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 13 (2002), pp. 95–120.

75 Gill Bennett, ‘British Policy in the Far East 1933–1936: Treasury and FO’,

Modern Asian Studies, 26 (1992), pp. 545–68; V.H. Rothwell, ‘The Mission of Sir

Leith-Ross to the Far East, 1935–1936’, Historical Journal, 18 (1975), pp. 147–69;

Peter Neville, ‘Lord Vansittart, Sir Walford Selby and the Debate about Treas-

ury Interference in the Conduct of British Foreign Policy in the 1930s’, Journal

of Contemporary History, 36, 4 (2001), pp. 623–33.

76 See Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic Relations; see also, ibid., ‘What Worth the

Americans? The British Strategic Foreign Policy-Making Elite’s View of Amer-

ican Maritime Power in the Far East, 1933–1941’, in Kennedy, ed., British Naval

Strategy, pp. 90–117.

77 Greg Kennedy, ‘1935: A Snapshot of British Imperial Defence in the Far East’,

in Neilson and Kennedy, eds, Far-Flung Lines, pp. 190–216.

78 Kennedy, Anglo-American Strategic Relations, pp. 121–210 makes this point

decisively.

79 Clare M. Scammell, ‘The RN and the Strategic Origins of the Anglo-German

Naval Agreement of 1935’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 20, 2 (1997), pp. 92–118;

Joseph A. Maiolo, ‘The Admiralty and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of

18 June 1935’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 10, 1 (1999), pp. 87–126 and ibid., The

RN and Nazi Germany, 1933–39. A Study in Appeasement and the Origins of the

Second World War (London, 1998).

80 D.C. Watt, ‘The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935: An Interim Judg-

ment’, Journal of Modern History, 28, 2 (1956), pp. 168–71; Hines H. Hall III,

‘The Foreign Policy-Making Process in Britain, 1934–1935, and the Origins of

the Anglo-German Naval Agreement’, Historical Journal, 19, 2 (1976), pp.

477–99; Reynolds M. Salerno, ‘Multilateral Strategy and Diplomacy: The Anglo-

German Naval Agreement and the Mediterranean Crisis, 1935–1936’, Journal of

Strategic Studies, 17, 2 (1994), pp. 39–78.

81 Greg Kennedy, ‘Becoming Dependent on the Kindness of Strangers: British

Strategic Foreign Policy, Naval Arms Limitation and the Soviet Factor:

1935–1937’, War in History, 11, 1 (2004), pp. 79–105; David K. Varey, ‘The Poli-

tics of Naval Aid: The FO, the Admiralty, and Anglo-Soviet Technical Coopera-

tion, 1936–37’, D & S, 14, 4 (2003), 50–68.

82 For British attempts to obscure what this meant for Imperial defence, see

Rainer Tamchina, ‘In Search of Common Causes: The Imperial Conference of

1937’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 1, 1 (1972), pp. 79–106.

83 For the crisis, see Reynolds M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads. Mediterranean Origins of

the Second World War, 1935–1940 (Ithaca, NY and London, 2002), pp. 10–39;

Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez; Robert Mallett, The Italian Navy and Fascist Expan-

sionism 1935–1940 (London, and Portland, OR, 1998).

84 See the articles by William C. Mills, ‘The Chamberlain-Grandi Conversations of

July-August 1937 and the Appeasement of Italy’, International History Review, 19,

3 (1997), 594–619; ‘The Nyon Conference: Neville Chamberlain, Anthony

Eden, and the Appeasement of Italy in 1937’, International History Review, 15, 1

(1993), 1–22, and ‘Sir Joseph Ball, Adrian Dingli, and Neville Chamberlain’s

“Secret Channel” to Italy’, International History Review, 24, 2 (2002), 278–317 for

the nature and extent of Chamberlain’s gullibility.

85 Keith Neilson, ‘Defence and Diplomacy: The British FO and Singapore,

1939–1940’, Twentieth Century British History, 14, 2 (2003), pp. 138–64.

86 Michael Carley, ‘ “A Situation of Delicacy and Danger”: Anglo-Soviet Relations,

August 1939-March 1940’, Contemporary European History, 8 (1999), pp. 175–208;

Patrick R. Osborn, Operation Pike: Britain versus the Soviet Union, 1939–1941

(Westport, CT, 2000), pp. 1–50.

87 John E. Dreifort, ‘Japan’s Advance into Indochina, 1940: The French

Response’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 13 (1983), pp. 279–95; Nicholas

Tarling, ‘The British and the First Japanese Move into Indo-China’, Journal of

Southeast Asian Studies, 21 (1990), pp. 35–65; ibid., Britain, Southeast Asia and the

Onset of the Paciﬁc War (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 123–92; Antony Best, Britain,

Japan and Pearl Harbor. Avoiding war in East Asia, 1936–41 (London and New

York), pp. 112–17.

88 A.G. Hopkins, ‘Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History’,

Past and Present, 164 (1999), pp. 198–243, here, p. 242.

The Foreign Ofﬁce, 1919–1939 49

3 The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence

of the empire

John Kent

The role of the Foreign Ofﬁce (FO) in military matters of imperial

defence has long been a grey and neglected area. The fact that ‘imperial’

can be interpreted in a number of ways with regard to the use of military

forces is part of the explanation. It also reﬂects the fact that in the early

twentieth century, imperial defence worked on the assumption that

Britain would have the resources to enable her empire to be defended.

This was particularly so when the Royal Navy (RN) was still a global force

of major signiﬁcance even when no longer at a level superior to its two

nearest challengers. With the approach of the Second World War, the

policy assumptions of civilian planners could no longer depend on being

able to provide what the empire in its various far-ﬂung components might

actually need for defence. Hard choices therefore loomed large but

nowhere larger than in the interwar debates on the appeasement of Japan

and Germany.

They also reﬂected the difﬁculty of determining what the empire sym-

bolised for British greatness and prestige as a still important global power

and how this might be realised or represented in the imperial mind, mili-

tary or civilian. The rise of Germany and Japan also began the debate

which was to continue for over 30 years as to whether Britain should give

priority to the demands of the empire over the alleged military require-

ments of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or continental

defence. As nuclear weapons became important strategic considerations,

the tension between foreign policy makers and those with military prior-

ities over the relation of geopolitical foreign policy needs and its effect on

strategic priorities did not decrease. Moreover, it should not be assumed

that military men did not have a geopolitical or even purely political vision

of the British Empire; this, whilst it might have reﬂected imperial service

in the distant lands of the Middle East or the Indian subcontinent, was not

averse to having the political or power political needs of the imperial state

dictate the military strategy of the British armed forces. Nor that imperial

defence after the Second World War would depend on the operational

needs arising from the empire or the defence of the British Isles. From

the time of the ﬁrst conﬂicts over the continental commitment, the needs

of imperial defence did not initially dictate foreign policy but opposed it;

it was only in the 1950s that an agreed global strategy, followed for polit-

ical reasons, led to alleged military needs justifying the policies maintain-

ing the status and (prestige) of an imperial, non-European or global role

for Britain.

The growing problems with imperial defence and the inability to ﬁght

the three powers of Germany, Japan and Italy in three different theatres

resulted in the loss, albeit temporary, of many of Britain’s Southeast Asian

territories. The whole issue of imperial defence, deﬁned in terms of stra-

tegic planning for defending British territory in a global conﬂict, was tied

into political conceptions of Britain’s global role. As capabilities declined,

the symbolism associated with a far-ﬂung presence outside the European

continent after the Second World War increased in importance. Imperial

defence, deﬁned as the strategy dictating the deployment of forces to

protect the territories of the Commonwealth/Empire, came to be mean-

ingless as in a global war in different theatres Britain could not provide

the military resources. Imperial defence, deﬁned in terms of the deploy-

ment of forces to quell rebellions or disturbances within parts of the

empire, was a very different story that will not be dealt with here.

A number of issues arose from the dramatic effect on the empire of the

Second World War even though old conceptions of Britain’s imperial role

remained. The loss of India was one such issue. But arguably, India had

been replaced by the Middle East, especially in the minds of army ofﬁcers

and the jewel in the Crown had become by 1945 the largest military base in

the world in the Suez Canal zone.

The Indian Ocean and its shores, which,

along with the northern shores of the Mediterranean (East of France and

Spain), Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Iran, India and Black Africa, formed the

regions covered by the British Defence Co-ordination Committee (BDCC)

(Middle East).

Whatever the realities of the economic and political value

of the Middle East, British Army ofﬁcers, with interwar experiences of the

BDCC region informing their perceptions, believed the region to be

important. In addition, the idea of imperial defence had been increasingly

linked to the Middle East in the eyes of the army by the fact that victories

had been won there in two World Wars whilst nothing but ignominious

defeat had resulted from excursions onto the continent of Europe.

This was a clear hint that military planning for the post-war world was

likely to be conducted with the British Empire very much in mind. There-

fore, the relationship between the foreign policy needs of any future Euro-

pean strategy and the military rationale for a continental commitment

might not be easy to reconcile. With the creation of NATO, this problem

became too difﬁcult to ignore. The differences between the military and

the FO led to the latter instigating a move away from traditional imperial

priorities. It was fairly simple to disentangle the roles of the FO and COS

when the issue was the political formation of a western European bloc.

Things were to become different when the political perceptions related to

The Foreign Ofﬁce and defence of the empire 51