As we approach the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, students of history will revisit the causes, conduct and aftermath of the war. In each of these, Sir Eyre Crowe played a very significant role. Yet, outside academic and diplomatic circles, his name is little known. An “outsider” in the Foreign Office, he neither attended an English public school nor university. He was born and educated in Germany. Yet he rose because of his unique expertise to be the Permanent Under-Secretary from 1920 until his death in 1925, during which time he worked, not always amicably, with prime ministers and foreign secretaries such as Lloyd George, Curzon, Ramsay Macdonald and Austen Chamberlain. On his death, Stanley Baldwin called him “our ablest public servant.” Eyre Crowe was a participant in events that led to the 1914–1918 war, was one of the main organisers of the blockade of Germany, helped to end the Ruhr crisis of 1923–24, and played a major role in the acceptance of the Dawes Plan at the 1924 London Conference. Shortly before he died, he persuaded a sceptical Cabinet to accept a policy that culminated in the Locarno Pact. Yet, Crowe played a strange role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Britain’s most knowledgeable expert on Germany, he was marginalised by Lloyd George prior to the signing of the Versailles Treaty, but then played a leading part as Ambassador Plenipotentiary. Crowe’s Memorandum of 1907 had a profound influence upon Foreign Office perceptions of Germany for more than forty years. The “Crowe line” on Germany was opposed by Neville Chamberlain and the British Ambassador in Berlin, Neville Henderson, prior to the Second World War. Crowe had believed that Germany was a great nation, but that Britain had made too many concessions to its government when it needed to stand firm. Foreign Office diplomats were even seen waving copies of the memorandum (by then a published document) in the faces of journalists from the pro-appeasement Times newspaper. This book focuses mainly on the 1907 Memorandum and Crowe’s career after the war, but it provides many insights into the characters, talents and failings of a number of players in this extraordinary period of history.

Combines essays on the "personality dimension" in the 19th and 20th century international history, placing in a proper historical perspective the impact of individual diplomats, politicians and military strategists on foreign policy-making.

A brilliant, sweeping history of diplomacy that includes personal stories from the noted former Secretary of State, including his stunning reopening of relations with China. The seminal work on foreign policy and the art of diplomacy. Moving from a sweeping overview of history to blow-by-blow accounts of his negotiations with world leaders, Henry Kissinger describes how the art of diplomacy has created the world in which we live, and how America’s approach to foreign affairs has always differed vastly from that of other nations. Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly incisive, Diplomacy stands as the culmination of a lifetime of diplomatic service and scholarship. It is vital reading for anyone concerned with the forces that have shaped our world today and will impact upon it tomorrow.

This work presents the transcript of a memorandum to British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey by Sir Eyre Crowe about the growing threat of Imperial Germany to the United Kingdom. It explained that a stronger British strategy was required towards Berlin in light of Imperial Germany's increasingly invasive geostrategic approach.

How does the historian approach primary sources? How do interpretations differ? How can they be used to write history? Reading Primary Sources goes a long way to providing answers for these questions. In the first part of this unique volume, the chapters give an overview of both traditional and new methodological approaches to the use of sources, analyzing the way that these have changed over time. The second part gives an overview of twelve different types of written sources, including letters, opinion polls, surveillance reports, diaries, novels, newspapers, and dreams, taking into account the huge expansion in the range of written primary sources used by historians over the last thirty years. This book is an up-to-date introduction into the historical context of these different genres, the ways they should be read, the possible insights and results these sources offer and the pitfalls of their interpretation. All of the chapters push the reader beyond a conventional understanding of source texts as mere "reflections" of a given reality, instead fostering an understanding of how each of the various genres has to be seen as a medium in its own right. Taking examples of sources from around the globe, and also including a student-friendly further reading section, this is the perfect companion for every student of history who wants to engage with sources.

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.

More than two thousand years ago the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu advised us to know our enemies. The question has always been how. In A Sense of the Enemy, the historian Zachary Shore demonstrates that leaders can best understand an opponent not simply from his pattern of past behavior, but from his behavior at pattern breaks. Meaningful pattern breaks occur during dramatic deviations from the routine, when the enemy imposes costs upon himself. It's at these unexpected moments, Shore explains, that successful leaders can learn what makes their rivals truly tick. Shore presents a uniquely revealing history of twentieth-century conflict. With vivid, suspenseful prose, he takes us into the minds of statesmen, to see how they in turn tried to enter the minds of others. In the process, he shows how this type of mind-reading, which he calls "strategic empathy," shaped matters of war and peace. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was an excellent strategic empath. In the wake of a British massacre of unarmed Indian civilians, how did Gandhi know that nonviolence could ever be effective? And what of Gustav Stresemann, the 21-year-old Wunderkind Ph.D., who rose from lobbyist for chocolate makers to Chancellor of Germany. How did he manage to resurrect his nation to great power status after its humiliating loss in World War One? And then there is Le Duan, the shadowy Marxist manipulator who was actually running North Vietnam during the 1960s, as opposed to Ho Chi Minh. How did this rigid ideologue so skillfully discern America's underlying constraints? And, armed with this awareness, how did he construct a grand strategy to defeat the United States? One key to all these leaders' triumphs came from the enemy's behavior at pattern breaks. Drawing on research from the cognitive sciences, and tapping multilingual, multinational sources, Shore has crafted an innovative history of the last century's most pivotal moments, when lives and nations were on the line. Through this curious study of strategic empathy, we gain surprising insights into how great leaders think.