{"id":185,"date":"2024-08-23T10:00:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/?page_id=185"},"modified":"2024-09-26T14:13:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-26T14:13:33","slug":"war-and-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/subject-introductions\/war-and-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"War and foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Richard Gaunt<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, University of Nottingham<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Britain\u2019s leading role in the defeat of France during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793\u20131802, 1803\u201315) gave it a major part in European affairs between 1815 and 1914. However, the Pax Britannica, or British peace, established at the Congress of Vienna (1814\u201315), did not prevent further military conflicts during the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>British foreign policy sought a balance of power between the major European powers, which it attempted to achieve through diplomatic as well as military means. Britain also prioritised its trade route to India, whether via the African Cape or through the Mediterranean. Britain\u2019s naval supremacy, until the late-nineteenth century, was crucial in this respect. A persistent concern throughout the period was the future of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey and the Near East. British anxiety at the expansion of Russian influence in the region led to military conflict in the Crimean War (1853\u20136) and collective European diplomacy at the Congress of Berlin (1878). Russian activity on India\u2019s borders also led to British military involvement in Afghanistan, where it fought wars in the 1840s and 1880s. Protecting Britain\u2019s connection with India motivated Disraeli to purchase a major share in the Suez Canal (1875), while Gladstone\u2019s government defended British interests in the region by occupying Egypt in 1882. Its subsequent campaign in neighbouring Sudan resulted in the death of General Gordon (1885).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Like other European powers, Britain engaged in the Scramble for Africa from the 1880s until the First World War. This led to a series of \u2018Little Wars\u2019 on the continent which culminated in the Second Boer War (1899\u20131902) in South Africa. By 1914, Britain had formed a defensive Entente with its former European enemies, France and Russia, while an emerging power, Germany, was in a Triple Alliance with Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On 4 August, Britain declared war on Germany in defence of Belgian neutrality, much as it had earlier fought Revolutionary France in defence of the Low Countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>This Routledge Historical Resource offers a wide range of primary sources and secondary literature to assist your studies of this important topic. An overall introduction to this theme is given in Jon Parry\u2019s essay on \u2018Britain and Europe: diplomacy and rivalry\u2019, while Alex Middleton presents a comparative view in his \u2018British politics in transnational perspective\u2019. John Lowe\u2019s <\/a>Britain and Foreign Affairs, 1815<\/em>\u2013<\/a>1885<\/em> offers a concise introduction to the first half of the period, and Graham Goodlad<\/a>\u2019s British Foreign and Imperial Policy, 1865<\/em>\u2013<\/a>1919<\/em> to the second. The role of India is central to Sneh Mahajan<\/a>\u2019s British Foreign Policy, 1874<\/em>\u2013<\/a>1914<\/em>. Among studies of Britain\u2019s foreign secretaries, Geoffrey Hicks<\/a>\u2019s Conservatism and British Foreign Policy, 1820<\/em>\u2013<\/a>1920<\/em> provides important insights. In terms of primary sources, Michael Partridge\u2019s <\/a>Lives of Victorian Political Figures: <\/em><\/a>Part 1 includes commentaries on foreign policy during the careers of Palmerston, Disraeli, and Gladstone, while the connections between war, empire, and trade are well illustrated in Peter J. Kitson\u2019s multi-volume series <\/a>Nineteenth-Century Travels, Explorations and Empires, Writings from the Era of Imperial Consolidation, 1835\u20131910.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s leading role in the defeat of France during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793\u20131802, 1803\u201315) gave it a major part in European affairs between 1815 and 1914. However, the Pax Britannica, or British peace, established at the Congress of Vienna (1814\u201315), did not prevent further military conflicts during the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":103,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-185","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/185\/revisions\/256"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/rhr-politicalhistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}