This volume is a comprehensive discussion of British diplomats and diplomacy in the formative period in which Britain emerged as the leading world power.

In Protestant Cosmopolitanism and Diplomatic Culture, Daniel Riches investigates seventeenth-century Brandenburg-Swedish relations to present an image of early modern diplomacy driven by interpersonal networks grounded in their members’ educational backgrounds, intellectual and cultural interests, religious convictions, and personal connections.

Servants of Diplomacy offers a bottom-up history of the 19th-century Foreign Office and in doing so, provides a ground-breaking study of modern British diplomacy. Whilst current literature focuses on the higher echelons of the Office, Keith Hamilton sheds a new light on the administrative and social history of Whitehall which have, until now, been largely ignored. Hamilton's examination of the roles and actions of the Foreign Office's domestic staff is exhaustive, with close attention paid to: the keepers of the office, keepers of the papers, the carriers of the papers and the efforts made to adapt to growing technological changes. Hamilton's exhaustive analysis also focuses on the reforms of 1905-06 and the Queen's Messengers during wartime. Drawing extensively from Foreign Office and Treasury archives and private manuscript collections, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest of British diplomatic history.

The Birth of a Great Power System, 1740-1815 examines a key development in modern European history: the origins and emergence of a competitive state system. H.M. Scott demonstrates how the well-known and dramatic events of these decades - the emergence of Russia and Prussia; the three partitions of Poland; the continuing retreat of the Ottoman Empire; the unprecedented territorial expansion of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, halted by the final defeat of Napoleon - were part of a wider process that created the modern great power system, dominated by Europe's five leading states. Enhanced by maps and a chronology of principal events, this comprehensive and accessible textbook is fully up-to-date in its coverage of recent scholarship. Unlike many other treatments of this period, Scott extends his beyond the French Revolution of 1789 in order to demonstrate how events both before and after this great upheaval merged to produce the central political development in modern European history. This book addresses the crucial phase in the emergence of the modern international system which, with the subsequent addition of the USA, Japan and Russia, has prevailed until the present day.

Balance of Power and Norm Hierarchy: Franco-British Diplomacy after the Peace of Utrecht offers a detailed study of French and British diplomacy in the age of ‘Walpole and Fleury’. After Louis XIV’s decease, European international relations were dominated by the collaboration between James Stanhope and Guillaume Dubois. Their alliance focused on the amendment and enlargement of the peace treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden. In-depth analysis of vast archival material uncovers the practical legal arguments used between Hampton Court and Versailles. ‘Balance of Power’ or ‘Tranquillity of Europe’ were in fact metaphors for the predominance of treaty law even over the most fundamental municipal norms. An implacable logic of norm hierarchy allowed to consolidate peace in Europe.

This book examines internal political conflicts in the British Empire within the legal framework of treason and sedition. The threat of treason and rebellion pervaded the British Atlantic in the 17th and 18th centuries; Britain's control of its territories was continually threatened by rebellion and war, both at home and in North America. Even after American independence, Britain and its former colony continued to be fearful that opposition and revolution might follow the French example, and both took legal measures to control both speech and political action. This study places these conflicts within a political and legal framework of the laws of treason and sedition as they developed in the British Atlantic. The treason laws originated in the reign of Edward III, and were adapted and modified in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were exported to the colonies, where they underwent both adaptation and elaboration in application in the slave societies as well as those dominated by free settlers. Relationships with natives and European rivals in the Americas affected the definitions of treason in practice, and the divided loyalties of the American revolutionary war added further problems of defining loyalty and treachery. Treason and Rebellion in the British Atlantic, 1685-1800 offers a new study of treason and sedition in the period by placing them in a truly transatlantic perspective, making it a valuable study for those interested in the legal and political of Britain's empire and 18th-century revolutions.

In A History of Diplomacy, historian Jeremy Black investigates how a form of courtly negotiation and information-gathering in the early modern period developed through increasing globalization into a world-shaping force in twenty-first-century politics. The monarchic systems of the sixteenth century gave way to the colonial development of European nations—which in turn were shaken by the revolutions of the eighteenth century—the rise and progression of multiple global interests led to the establishment of the modern-day international embassy system. In this detailed and engaging study of the ever-changing role of international relations, the aims, achievements, and failures of foreign diplomacy are presented along with their complete historical and cultural background.

The history of international relations and warfare of early modern Europe has gained popularity in recent years. This bibliography provides a valuable listing of books, dissertations, and journal articles in the English language for scholars and general readers interested in diplomatic relations and warfare from the Hundred Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars.

The years between 1744 and 1757 were a testing time for the British government as political unrest at home exploded into armed rebellion, whilst on the continent French armies were repeatedly victorious. Providing an analytical narrative, supported by thematic chapters, this book examines the relationship between Britain’s politics and foreign policy in a period not hitherto treated as a unit. Building upon methods employed in the preceding two books (’Politics and Foreign Policy in the Age of George I, 1714-1727’ and ’Politics and Foreign Policy, 1727-44’), this volume charts the significant political changes of 1744-57. It shows how ministerial change and political fortunes were closely linked to foreign policy, with foreign policy affecting, and being affected by, political developments. In particular, it asks important questions about the politics and foreign policy of these years and thus reconsiders the context of imperial growth, economic development and political stability. Far from being simply a study of individual episodes, the book outlines the structural aspects of the relationship between foreign policy and politics, examining issues of political stability, motivation and effectiveness. In particular, the role of monarch, Court and ministers are considered alongside those of Parliament, parliamentary politics, and the public sphere of discussion, notably, but not only, the press. The book therefore offers a guided narrative that both uses and builds on the analysis offered by contemporary commentators, and provides an informed assessment of the significance of the ideas, terms and language employed in eighteenth-century Britain to discuss foreign policy and politics.

In the eighteenth century, Britain became a world superpower through a series of sensational military strikes. Traditionally, the Royal Navy has been seen as Britain's key weapon, but in Three Victories and a Defeat Brendan Simms argues that Britain's true strength lay with the German aristocrats who ruled it at the time. The House of Hanover superbly managed a complex series of European alliances that enabled Britain to keep the continental balance of power in check while dramatically expanding her own empire. These alliances sustained the nation through the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years' War. But in 1776, Britain lost the American continent by alienating her European allies. An extraordinary reinterpretation of British and American history, Three Victories and a Defeat is a masterwork by a rising star of the historical profession.