Britain in Global Politics ― From Gladstone to Churchill

This volume of essays focuses upon Britain's international and imperial role from the mid-Victorian era through until the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Individual chapters by acknowledged authorities in their field deal with a variety of broad-ranging and particular issues, including: 'cold wars' before the Cold War in Anglo-Russian relations; Lord Curzon and the diplomacy of war and peace-making; air-power as an instrument of colonial control; Foreign Office efforts to frame and influence the historical narrative; Winston Churchill's alternative to, and the pursuit of, policies of 'appeasement'; British responses to conflict and regime change in Spain; the Secret Intelligence Service and British diplomacy in East Asia'; Neville Chamberlain and the 'phoney war'; efforts to combat American misperceptions of Britain in wartime; and British-American differences over the future of Italy's colonial possessions. This collection, along with the accompanying volume covering the period after World War 2, is dedicated to the memory of Professor Saki Dockrill.

Christopher Baxter is an Honorary Lecturer in Intelligence History at Queen's University Belfast, Ireland, having previously been one of the Foreign Office's resident historians. He is the author of The Great Power Struggle in East Asia, 1944-50: Britain, America and Post-War Rivalry (Palgrave, 2009), and co-editor with Andrew Stewart of Diplomats at War: British and Commonwealth Diplomacy in Wartime (2008).

Michael Dockrill is Emeritus Professor of Diplomatic History at King's College, London, UK. He has written extensively on nineteenth and twentieth century history, and his books include British Establishment Perspectives on France, 1936-40 (Macmillan, 1999), and (co-authored with Michael Hopkins) The Cold War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Keith Hamilton is a Consultant Historian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where he was formerly a senior editor of Documents on British Policy Overseas. His recent publications include (co-authored with Richard Langhorne) The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration (2nd edition, 2011), and Transformational Diplomacy after the Cold War: Britain's Know How Fund in Post-Communist Europe, 1989-2003 (2013).