External challenges, strategic threats, and war have shaped the course of modern British history. This volume examines how Britain mobilized to meet these challenges and how developments in the constitution, state, public sphere, and economy were a response to foreign policy issues from the Restoration to the rise of New Labour.

External challenges, strategic threats, and war have shaped the course of modern British history. This volume examines how Britain mobilized to meet these challenges and how developments in the constitution, state, public sphere, and economy were a response to foreign policy issues from the Restoration to the rise of New Labour.

Through its focus on the relationship between foreign and domestic politics, this book provides a new perspective on the often fractious and tangled events of George I’s reign (1714-27). This was a period of transition for Britain, as royal authority gave way to cabinet government, and as the country began to exercise increased influence upon the world stage. It was a reign that witnessed the trauma of the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion, saw Britain fighting Spain as part of the Quadruple Alliance, and in which Britain confronted the rise of Russia under Peter the Great. There has been relatively little new detailed work on this subject since Hatton’s biography of George I appeared in 1978, and that book, while impressive, devoted relatively little attention to the domestic political dimension of foreign policy. In contrast, Black links diplomacy to domestic politics to show that foreign policy was a key aspect of government as well as the leading battleground both for domestic politics and for ministerial rivalries. As a result he demonstrates how party identities in foreign policy were not marginal, to either policy or party, but, instead, central to both. The research is based upon a wealth of both British and foreign archive material, including State Papers Domestic, Scotland, Ireland and Regencies, as well as Foreign. Extensive use is also made of parliamentary and ministerial papers, as well as the private papers of numerous diplomats. Foreign archives consulted include papers from Hanover, Osnabrück, Darmstadt, Marburg, Munich, Paris, The Hague, Vienna and Turin. By drawing upon such a wide ranging array of sources, this book offers a rich and nuanced view of politics and foreign policy under George I.

The years 1650 to 1750 - sandwiched between an age of 'wars of religion' and an age of 'revolutionary wars' - have often been characterized as a 'de-ideologized' period. However, the essays in this collection contend that this is a mistaken assumption. For whilst international relations during this time may lack the obvious polarization between Catholic and Protestant visible in the proceeding hundred years, or the highly charged contest between monarchies and republics of the late eighteenth century, it is forcibly argued that ideology had a fundamental part to play in this crucial transformative stage of European history. Many early modernists have paid little attention to international relations theory, often taking a 'Realist' approach that emphasizes the anarchism, materialism and power-political nature of international relations. In contrast, this volume provides alternative perspectives, viewing international relations as socially constructed and influenced by ideas, ideology and identities. Building on such theoretical developments, allows international relations after 1648 to be fundamentally reconsidered, by putting political and economic ideology firmly back into the picture. By engaging with, and building upon, recent theoretical developments, this collection treads new terrain. Not only does it integrate cultural history with high politics and foreign policy, it also engages directly with themes discussed by political scientists and international relations theorists. As such it offers a fresh, and genuinely interdisciplinary approach to this complex and fundamental period in Europe's development.

Despite a long and eventful reign, Britain's George II is a largely forgotten monarch, his achievements overlooked and his abilities misunderstood. This landmark biography uncovers extensive new evidence in British and German archives, making possible the most complete and accurate assessment of this thirty-three-year reign. Andrew C. Thompson paints a richly detailed portrait of the many-faceted monarch in his public as well as his private life. Born in Hanover in 1683, George Augustus first came to London in 1714 as the new Prince of Wales. He assumed the throne in 1727, held it until his death in 1760, and has the distinction of being Britain's last foreign-born king and the last king to lead an army in battle. With George's story at its heart, the book reconstructs his thoughts and actions through a careful reading of the letters and papers of those around him. Thompson explores the previously underappreciated roles George played in the political processes of Britain, especially in foreign policy, and also charts the intricacies of the king's complicated relationships and reassesses the lasting impact of his frequent return trips to Hanover. George II emerges from these pages as an independent and cosmopolitan figure of undeniable historical fascination.

Political decisions are never taken in a vacuum but are shaped both by current events and historical context. In other words, long-term developments and patterns in which the accumulated memory of what came earlier, can greatly (and sometimes subconsciously) influence subsequent policy choices. Working forward from the later seventeenth century, this book explores the ’deep history’ of the changing and competing understandings within the Tory party of the role Britain has aspired to play on a world stage. Conservatism has long been one of the major British political tendencies, committed to the defence of established institutions, with a strong sense of the ’national interest’, and embracing both ’liberal’ and ’authoritarian’ views of empire. The Tory party has, moreover, at several times been deeply divided, if not convulsed, by different perspectives on Britain’s international orientation and different positions on foreign and imperial policy. Underlying Tory beliefs upon which views of Britain’s global role were built were often not stated but assumed. As a result they tend to be obscured from historical view. This book seeks to recover and reconsider those beliefs, and to understand how the Tory party has sought to navigate its way through the difficult pathways of foreign and imperial politics, and why this determination outlasted Britain’s rapid decolonisation and was apparently remarkably little affected by it. With a supporting cast from Pitt to Disraeli, Churchill to Thatcher, the book provides a fascinating insight into the influence of history over politics. Moreover it argues that there has been an inherent politicisation of the concept of national interests, such that strategic culture and foreign policy cannot be understood other than in terms of a historically distorted political debate.

The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. David Edgerton's bold, compelling new history shows the conflict in a new light, with Britain as a very wealthy country, formidable in arms, ruthless in pursuit of its interests, and in command of a global production system. Rather than belittled by a Nazi behemoth, Britain arguably had the world's most advanced mechanized forces. It had not only a great empire, but allies large and small. Edgerton shows that Britain fought on many fronts and its many home fronts kept it exceptionally well supplied with weapons, food and oil, allowing it to mobilize to an extraordinary extent. It created and deployed a vast empire of machines, from the humble tramp steamer to the battleship, from the rifle to the tank, made in colossal factories the world over. Scientists and engineers invented new weapons, encouraged by a government and prime minister enthusiastic about the latest technologies. The British, indeed Churchillian, vision of war and modernity was challenged by repeated defeat at the hands of less well-equipped enemies. Yet the end result was a vindication of this vision. Like the United States, a powerful Britain won a cheap victory, while others paid a great price. Putting resources, machines and experts at the heart of a global rather than merely imperial story, Britain's War Machine demolishes timeworn myths about wartime Britain and gives us a groundbreaking and often unsettling picture of a great power in action.

This is the most comprehensive review of maritime cabotage law. It introduces the new theory of Developmental Sovereignty to jurisprudence. The maritime cabotage law provisions and approaches as adopted in many states and jurisdictions has been extensively scrutinised. This book challenges the established and accepted wisdom surrounding maritime cabotage by presenting new reasoning on the underpinning principles of the concept of maritime cabotage law. The book offers a vibrant discussion on the adjustment in the regulatory approaches of maritime cabotage, from one that was intrinsically premised on the idea of national sovereignty, to one that now embraces the broader ideology of development. It investigates what the common understanding of the law of maritime cabotage should be and on what intellectual basis it can be justified. It reduces the inconsistencies and confusion that surround the concept and application of maritime cabotage law, to provide a more certain and more robust concept of maritime cabotage.

Half a millennium of European warfare brilliantly retold by masterly historian Brendan Simms At the heart of Europe's history lies a puzzle. In most of the world humankind has created enormous political frameworks, whether ancient (such as China) or modern (such as the United States). Sprawling empires, kingdoms or republics appear to be the norm. By contrast Europe has remained stubbornly chaotic and fractured into often amazingly tiny pieces, with each serious attempt to unify the continent (by Charles V, Napoleon and Hitler) thwarted. In this marvelously ambitious and exciting new book, Brendan Simms tells the story of Europe's constantly shifting geopolitics and the peculiar circumstances that have made it both so impossible to dominate, but also so dynamic and ferocious. It is the story of a group of highly competitive and mutually suspicious dynasties, but also of a continent uniquely prone to interference from 'semi-detached' elements, such as Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Britain and (just as centrally to Simms' argument) the United States. Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy will become the standard work on this crucial subject - and an extremely enjoyable one. Reviews: 'This is a brilliant and beautifully written history. From the Holy Roman Empire to the Euro, Brendan Simms shows that one of the constant preoccupations of Europeans has always been the geography, the power and the needs of Germany. Europe is a work of extraordinary scholarship delivered with the lightest of touches. It will be essential, absorbing reading for anyone trying to understand both the past and the present of one of the most productive and most dangerous continents on earth' William Shawcross 'World history is German history, and German history is world history.This is the powerful case made by this gifted historian of Europe, whose expansive erudition revives the proud tradition of the history of geopolitics, and whose immanent moral sensibility reminds us that human choices made in Berlin (and London) today about the future of Europe might be decisive for the future of the world' Timothy Snyder (author of Bloodlands) About the author: Brendan Simms is Professor of the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge. His major books include Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia (shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize) and Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire.

William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) was the outstanding statesman of the Victorian age. He was an MP for over sixty years, a long serving and exceptional Chancellor of the Exchequer and four times Prime Minister. As the leader of the Liberal party over three decades, he personified the values and policies of later Victorian Liberalism. Gladstone, however, was always more than just a politician. He was also a considerable scholar, a dedicated Churchman and had a range of interests and connections that made him, in many respects, the quintessential Victorian. Yet important aspects of Gladstone's life have received relatively little recent attention from historians. This study reappraises Gladstone by focusing on five themes: his reputation; his representation in visual and material culture; his personal life; his role as an official; and the ethical and political basis of his international policies. This collection of original, often multidisciplinary studies, provides new perspectives on Gladstone's public and private life. As such, it illustrates the many-sided nature of his career and the complexities of his personality.