Splendid Isolation

7 Key excerpts on "Splendid Isolation"

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  Aspects of British Political History 1815-1914

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  19 FROM Splendid Isolation TO WAR British foreign policy 1895–1914

  The term ‘Splendid Isolation’ refers to a period in British diplomacy when the British government preferred a policy of isolation to an alliance or close diplomatic ties with other powers. This is usually considered to have lasted from 1895 until 1902. Contemporary politicians certainly used the term; it appeared in the speeches of Salisbury, Rosebery, Harcourt, Goschen and Joseph Chamberlain, to name only a few. Historians, however, have been more wary. The first to use the description consistently was W.H. Dawson, who argued that Lord Salisbury deliberately opted for a policy of ‘Splendid Isolation’.1 This has been questioned by others, who maintain that if indeed Britain was in isolation, it was involuntary and far from ‘splendid’. L. Penson, for example, considered that ‘her isolation was a fact rather than a policy’,2 while Z. Steiner considers that ‘Splendid Isolation’ is ‘a cliché which must be abandoned’.3

  ‘Splendid’ or not, there were good reasons at the end of the century for emerging from it. This was a gradual process involving the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, the Anglo-French Entente (1904) and the Anglo-Russian Convention (1907). The intention of these was not to increase Britain’s involvement in Europe, or to seek a European-based security. They were primarily concerned with settling imperial and maritime problems.

  But one thing led to another and Britain found herself increasingly involved by these new connections in European affairs. There were several issues which ensured that this occurred. One was the growing rivalry with Germany. Another was the delayed effect of the Treaty of Berlin which now threw up crises to threaten the equilibrium of the powers, which included Britain within its scope.

  This ensured that the last vestiges of isolation disappeared and Britain even began to develop military co-operation with France and Russia. But even in 1914 Britain was not committed by the Ententes to going to war with Germany and her reason for so doing needs separate analysis.

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  Cornell Studies in Security Affairs

  Reputation and Military Alliances before the First World War

  • Gregory D. Miller(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  3

  The End of Splendid Isolation

  British Pursuit of an Ally, 1901–1905

  Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON

  Important Dates

  Key Actors

  Britain’s attitude toward the European Continent at the end of the nineteenth century is often described as one of “Splendid Isolation.” This is an unfortunate term because it mischaracterizes British foreign policy during that time. Rather than avoiding involvement in European power politics—which is how U.S. isolation is frequently described—Britain simply avoided any long-term formal defense commitments, giving it a free hand to switch allegiances and maintain the balance of power on the Continent. However, events toward the end of the nineteenth century contributed to a shift in British thinking. Growing competition for colonies among Europe’s great powers brought with it increased threat from foreign navies, particularly France and Russia after their formation of the Dual Alliance on 4 January 1894. In addition, the Boer War (1899–1902)—opposed by much of the rest of Europe—illustrated to many in the British government the limited resources they had available for maintaining their empire and for unilaterally preserving Europe’s balance of power.1

  As a result, for the first half-decade of the 1900s, British alliance decisions significantly diverged from previous policy. Britain initially looked to Germany for increased cooperation, as a direct balance against both France and Russia. However, within a year the British government abandoned its alliance negotiations with Germany and instead turned to Japan as a way to balance against Russia in Asia. England was then nearly dragged into a war when Japan attacked Russia, but the British felt so compelled to honor their agreement that they went beyond the required neutrality. Then, during the Russo-Japanese War, England formed the Entente Cordiale with France, which was at least partly a result of the two states’ mutual concern over being dragged into war by their allies. This agreement not only influenced the outcome of the war between Japan and Russia, as well as the First Moroccan Crisis, but it also helped lay the foundation for the division of Europe leading up to the First World War.

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  The Foreign Office and British Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century

  • Gaynor Johnson, Gaynor Johnson(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Splendid Isolation to Finest Hour: Britain as a Global Power, 1900–1950 JOHN CHARMLEY

  The title of this essay would match its content better were the title to be reversed and read: ‘Finest Hour to Splendid Isolation’. The need to understand the origins of the two world wars dominated the study of British foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century, shaping a narrative in which the themes of triumph and decline coexist without any sense of unease. Simultaneously the story is one of two great victories, followed by a period of precipitous decline. Paul Kennedy, writing in the early 1980s, thought that ‘since Britain did occupy for so long a period such a pre-eminent role in world affairs, it is important to emphasise how swiftly and how completely that position has vanished’.1 Twenty years on, no one would write quite in this vein, but historians have not yet adjusted themselves away from the obsession with what has been called (in an ugly neologism) ‘declinology’. If the grand narrative no longer ends where it did, there may also be a case for arguing that it may not begin there either. In four books dealing with aspects of British diplomacy after 1874, the author of this essay has endeavoured to argue the need for a different perspective on the subject;2 clamant arguments over the virtues, or otherwise, of Winston Churchill have sometimes obscured the deeper argument pursued. This essay takes the opportunity to suggest how British foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century might look if the triumphal lenses are laid aside.

  European diplomacy from the creation of the Kaiserreich to the outbreak of the Great War was first studied in order to understand how the first event led to the second. Works by the giants of diplomatic history, W.L. Langer, Luigi Albertini, Bernadotte Schmitt and A.J.P. Taylor, pioneered the way, followed in a later generation by magisterial studies by James Joll, Paul Kennedy, Zara Steiner, Samuel Williamson, Dominic Lieven, Richard Bosworth, John Keiger and Volker Berghahn.3 Unconsciously a teleology emerged and all roads led to 1914. The fact that understanding the outbreak of the Great War failed to prevent a Second World War confirmed the centrality of the Anglo-German antagonism as an organising theme of the meta-narrative of twentieth century British foreign policy. A.J.P. Taylor (again), Donald Watt, Sidney Aster, Martin Gilbert and others all tried to explain how the second cataclysm had occurred.4 All of this scholarly activity created the framework within which we came to understand the history of British foreign policy in the last century. The picture itself was painted in its boldest colours by one of the most influential historians of the twentieth century — Winston Churchill. His clear, broad brush strokes revealed a Britain passing from the isolationism of Salisbury through a continental commitment by Grey to the triumph of the First World War; but this was followed by a retreat from commitment, the disaster of appeasement and a new German attempt at world domination. This story was already familiar from the documentary record, most notably Eyre Crowe's famous memorandum of 1 January 1907, reproduced in Gooch and Temperley's third volume of British Documents on the Origins of the War .5 This placed recent British policy into a longer tradition, arguing that since the days of the Elizabeth I, Britain had tried to maintain the balance of power in Europe by opposing the attempts of any single power to dominate the continent. Churchill's narrative fitted easily within this wider picture, the effect of which was to enable him to argue that the appeasers of the 1930s had (in a favourite phrase) fallen below the level of events; they were outside the grand tradition of British foreign policy. Thanks to Churchill, what Lord Robert Cecil, third Marquess of Salisbury, had written in 1864 was as true a century later: ‘We have been brought up to believe that England's voice is of weight in the councils of the world. Our national pride has been fed by histories of the glorious deeds of our fathers, when single-handed they defied the conqueror to whom every other European nation had been compelled to humble itself.6

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  Alternatives to Appeasement

  Neville Chamberlain and Hitler's Germany

  • Andrew David Stedman(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  1 ISOLATION AND ABSOLUTE PACIFISM

  I believe that we should gradually and honourably detach ourselves from all these commitments which we have. I believe that by our own strong arm, and by that alone, we shall win through and be a power for peace in the world.1

  (Sir Rupert de la Bere, House of Commons, June 1936)

  Introduction

  It has been argued by some of Chamberlain’s many detractors, amongst contemporaries and historians alike, that the National Government should have pursued a policy of isolation as an alternative to appeasement in the late 1930s. Unlike the Prime Minister, these critics envisaged a country that deliberately chose to have no ties in Europe, withdrawing almost entirely from continental affairs. ‘Splendid Isolation’ had, of course, been a traditional foreign policy strategy for Britain, an island nation separated from Europe by the channel and its formidable navy, for hundreds of years.2 Even in the late 1930s, however, the belief that the best way to secure peace would be an armed detachment from Europe remained the avowed preference of a small number of staunch advocates, with figures such as press baron Lord Beaverbrook and MP Leo Amery among its most committed supporters.

  This chapter will examine the origins and viability of the strategies of isolation and, later, absolute pacifism as alternatives to appeasement. The latter is defined here as the organised non-violent resistance policies of the small number of ultra-committed diehards among the general pacifist community, as well as demands for appeasing Hitler long after Chamberlain had effectively abandoned this approach. Advocates of both isolation and pacifism were determined and vocal critics of the National Government in the years before war, convinced that theirs was the only course that could avert catastrophe.

  The few references to isolation and pacifism in the orthodox period of writing on Chamberlain and appeasement do not seem to regard them as realistic options. Historical memoirs from political figures who had played a leading role in events form a substantial portion of this literature. Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office between 1930 and 1938, and no great admirer of the Prime Minister who had removed him from this post, addressed both strategies. Looking back on the origins of the Second World War, Vansittart deemed pacifism to be an unobtainable ideal and argued that isolation actually brought war closer: ‘Nothing is more certain to provide the eventual cataclysm than the policy of implied, let alone proclaimed, isolation advocated by such people as Lord Beaverbrook.’3 Harold Macmillan offered a similar perspective, asserting that the actions of leading pacifists in the 1930s helped create the conditions for war, undermining British defence preparations and hamstringing efforts at deterrence.4

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  The Victorian Empire and Britain's Maritime World, 1837-1901

  The Sea and Global History

  • M. Taylor, M. Taylor(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  7 Insularity and Empire in the Late Nineteenth Century Jan Rüger

  ‘Insularity is such a fundamental determinant of British history that it is surprising how little attention historians have paid to it.’1 Since Keith Robbins wrote this in the early 1990s, a number of authors have explored this theme, most notably Kathleen Wilson in The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century .2 Yet as far as the late Victorian and Edwardian periods are concerned, Robbins’s statement still essentially holds true: there is no in-depth study that would explore the politics and culture of insularity in late-nineteenth-century Britain.3 This seems surprising when we consider how closely bound up ideas of nationhood and belonging were with island discourses during this time. Insularity was a key concept in late-nineteenth-century British self-understanding. Indeed, it would not go too far to claim that the Victorians and Edwardians were busy constructing their nation ‘as an island’.4

  Yet insularity was not only a popular, but also an ambiguous concept, both in imperial and national contexts. What exactly the term ‘island nation’ referred to remained contested throughout the period. This was all the more so since there was a tension, if not contradiction, between the idea of insularity and the idea of empire. In what follows I shall investigate this tension and the contested meanings of insularity in the late nineteenth century. There are worse places to start such an enquiry than at the shore, the borderline between sea and land. It was here, at the natural boundaries of the United Kingdom, that ideas of the ‘island nation’ crystallised in discourse and experience. The shoreline was again and again invoked for the construction of the nation, most obviously in the case of the ‘white cliffs of Dover’, that symbolic marker of the border between ‘abroad’ and England, Britain or simply ‘home’. The symbolic value of the cliffs was explored in literature, art and popular culture long before the first and second world wars. Poems by writers ranging from Shakespeare to Matthew Arnold linked ‘the nation’ and the cliffs. Powerful debates unfolded whenever this shore seemed threatened. This was the case when foreign invasions were feared or imagined, or when technological innovations made it possible to overcome the ‘island status’, be it through aviation or the feasibility of a channel tunnel.5

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  American Exceptionalism

  • Hilde Eliassen Restad(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  27

  Weinberg, on the other hand, equated isolationism with non-entanglement, thus defining it more as a negative policy.28 To Weinberg, the non-entanglement of the Founding Fathers expressed a theory of the national interest that held that “all vital interests, and especially peace, flourish best when detached, in so far as possible through maintaining freedom of action, from the fate of the interests of the others.” Later, with John Quincy Adams’ famous speech against searching abroad for monsters to destroy, the principle also became a “theory of national duty.” It maintained that the United States could save the world only if it remained free to save itself – in other words, building on the traditional thesis of exemplary exceptionalism.29

  But both Adler’s and Weinberg’s definitions seem to miss the point of isolationism – which is not to take advantage of Europe’s distress in order to “round out one’s borders,” to safeguard maneuverability, or to pursue general policies of neutrality and non-intervention. Rather, it is to isolate one’s state from the affairs of others. This is a much stricter definition of the term than how classic historians used it.

  Isolationism entails, first, the voluntary abstention from a policy area – political, economic, or security-related – over which a state is capable of exerting control. One can decide to be politically isolationist, economically isolationist, or isolationist in security policy. It is by voluntarily abstaining from exerting some kind of influence that one becomes isolationist, not by refraining from action where no action is possible, as Bear Braumoeller notes in his excellent conceptual discussion of isolationism.30

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  The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain

  Politics and Power Before the First World War

  • Vernon Bogdanor(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Biteback Publishing

    (Publisher)

  134 of how Britain came to meet these new challenges while maintaining her detachment from the Continent. After 1905, that detachment was, slowly and gradually, to come to an end.

  Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary for the fourth time, was to leave as great a mark on foreign policy as Palmerston. But he was a very different sort of Foreign Secretary from Palmerston, who had sought, so Salisbury believed, to spread Britain’s liberal values abroad. Palmerston appeared to Salisbury a crusader, seeking friendship with liberal regimes, while keeping his distance from illiberal ones. He had based his policy on the character of foreign regimes. This, Salisbury believed, was a mistake. For him, the essence of foreign policy was defence of the national interest. Success depended on a careful definition of British interests and then finding the best means to protect them. That might well require association with illiberal and despotic regimes. Ideology was irrelevant, and could only cloud the attempt to achieve a clear perception of British interests. The prime such interest was peace, and that was best secured pragmatically, through a careful balancing of British interests in different parts of the world, distinguishing what was fundamental from what was less important, using strength to preserve what was fundamental, while relying upon diplomacy to balance competing claims where less fundamental interests were at stake. But Salisbury did not fully appreciate the new problems facing Britain. Isolation, he continued to believe as late as 1901, was ‘a danger in whose existence we have no historical reason for believing’.19 Many of his colleagues did not agree. For them, Britain was coming to be overextended. Britain, Chamberlain was to tell the 1902 Colonial Conference, was a ‘weary Titan’, which ‘staggers under the too vast orb of its fate. We have borne the burden long enough.’20

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