Rationalism and Empire, 1850–1914

This collection of essays makes a major contribution to the growing debate on British foreign policy before the First World War, and mounts a sustained critique of the received interpretation that invites comparison with the work of Fritz Fischer on the foreign policy of Imperial Germany. The Policy of the Entente presents a realistic assessment of British priorities in the years before 1914, and considers the fundamental and conflicting pressures that determined the formulation of foreign policy. The author concludes that British policy, far from being increasingly Eurocentric, was emphatically imperial: indeed many of the difficulties faced by Britain's rulers stemmed from their inability to live up to this Imperial self-image.