Until 1970 it would have been premature to attempt a comprehensive and impartial account of British foreign policy from 1905 to 1916, during the secretaryship of Sir Edward Grey. Apart from the difficulty of passing judgement on matters that were still controversial, the confidential archives of the British government for the years after 1905 did not begin to become available until the 1950s. By 1970, however, scholars had thoroughly digested the contents of these voluminous records up to 1916, and a statement of their findings was even overdue. In this volume many of the British historians who have been in the forefront of the research report on their work. They establish the facts about a period which saw fundamental changes in Great Britain's position in the world, and offer assessments of the British government's contribution to such important developments as the evolution of the Anglo-French Entente, Anglo-German rivalry before 1914, the outbreak of the first World War and the origin of the League of Nations.

This classic work, first published in 1958, is a seminal text in international business history. This new, substantially updated and revised edition is being published on the fortieth anniversary of the first edition. Features of the revised edition include: * a new introduction * a new concluding chapter * amendments and additions to the original text * a new statistical appendix which examines the main features and significance of the US penetration of UK industry over the past four decades. Professor Dunning is one of the most internationally renowned and respected scholars in international business research. The updated version of this highly regarded book is a major contribution to studies in international business history.

This book describes the rise--and fall--of an elite group which flourished within English society from the 1880s until the First World War: The Souls. Its members included intellectuals and politicians. What made the Souls unique, however, was that some of their most influential members were women. "The Unquiet Souls" is no bland eulogy of a 'Golden Age' but a portrayal of England during four decades of dazzling and often cruel contradictions. Angela Lambert examines the rigid hierarchy of servants and class, the manipulation that kept power in the hands of the landed aristocracy and the very rich, and the unwritten rules and private language that defined membership of this charmed, doomed circle, the like of which could never form again.

City Bankers, 1890–1914 is a major contribution to a controversial area of economic history and to the debate about the nature of British society in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Translated here into English for the first time, it provides a detailed analysis of the banking community of London between 1890 and 1914 when the City of London was the undisputed financial centre of the world. Attention is paid to the social origins, education, careers , business interests and fortunes of its members, to the networks of relationships of its most important dynasties, as well as to the political influence of the world of banking. The analysis is based on a sample of 460 bankers at the heart of international finance and the author has used a wide range of banking archives and private papers. Business historians and economists will welcome this comprehensive study of a most important group of capitalists at the junction of the business world and aristocratic society in the Edwardian age.

Far Flung Lines shows how the British Empire used its maritime supremacy to construct and maintain a worldwide defence system that would protect its vital imperial interests. By combining a number of different historical threads - particularly imperial history, naval history and military history - Neilson and Kennedy rebut the idea that British defence policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily concerned with maintaining the balance of power in Europe.

The technical transformation of the Royal Navy during the Victorian era posed a succession of bewildering design, tactical and operational problems for administrators from the 1830s onwards. These problems have attracted considerable scrutiny. Far less scrutiny, however, has been paid to an equally fundamental strategic quandary created by the switch from sail to steam. Sailing ships boasted impressive strategic reach, circumscribed only by coasts, shoals and nutritional requirements of crews. As steam supplanted sail, this reach vanished, with vessels whose bunkers required constant refilling from local depots and whose machinery needed frequent maintenance. The task of imperial defence - convoy, patrolling sea lanes between empire and home islands, and defending colonies from seaborne raiders - now required a far more comprehensive logistical infrastructure than had been the case during the 18th and 19th centuries. Donald Schurman's study reveals how British statesmen, military and naval professionals, and administrators evolved a suitable response to this situation based on the creation of a system of defended coaling stations. Schurman also places the creation of this steam-age imperial defence policy in the context of political ideology and partisanship, surveying the divide between Liberals and Conservatives, differences within parties, turf battles among government departments, and divergent views among politicians, soldiers and sailors wrestling with imperial policy.

In his groundbreaking work, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, Sumida presents a provocative and authoritative revisionist history of the origins, nature and consequences of the "Dreadnought Revolution" of 1906. Based on intensive and extensive archival research, the book strives to explain vital financial and technical matters which enable readers to observe the complex interplay of fiscal, technical, strategic, and personal factors that shaped the course of British naval decision-making during the critical quarter century that preceded the outbreak of the First World War.

Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial 2010 account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.

Originally published in 1976, "Clausewitz and the State" presents a comprehensive analysis of one of the significant thinkers of modern Europe. Peter Paret combines social and military history and psychological interpretation with a study of Clausewitz's military theories and of his unduly neglected historical and political writing. This timely new edition includes a preface which allows Paret to recount the past thirty years of discussion on Clausewitz and respond to critics. A companion volume to "Clausewitz's On War", this book is indispensable to anyone interested in Clausewitz and his theories, and their proper historical context.