Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-09T22:28:43.513Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

British foreign policy: a review of some recent literature*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

James P. Barber
Affiliation:
Professor of Government, the Open University

Extract

THERE must now be a case for classifying books on post-war British foreign policy as ‘whodunnits’. Certainly everybody is agreed about the victim. Britannia, the once proud, imperious mistress of the seas and a mighty empire, lies exhausted and bereft, a mere shadow of her former self. Of course she is not exactly dead, but plainly a terrible catastrophe has befallen her. Her continued survival appears to rest on a humiliating dependence on others. Far away are those heady days of 1946 when Abdullah, the ruler of TransJordan could be summoned to London to be told that the British Government had decided that his country was to be an independent state and he was to be its King, and when, perhaps even more remarkable in the light of present circumstances, the British gave £100 million in economic aid to West Germany.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 272 note 1 These events are mentioned by Northedge, pp. 75 and 106.

page 272 note 2 Frankel, op. cit. p. 1.

page 273 note 1 Northedge, op. cit. p. n.

page 273 note 2 Frankel, op. cit. p. 48 and p. 28 respectively.

page 273 note 3 Ibid. p. 7.

page 274 note 1 Jones, op. cit. p. 180.

page 274 note 2 Ibid. p. 2.

page 274 note 3 Cmnd. 4107.

page 275 note 1 Susan Strange, Sterling and British Policy (London, 1971).

page 275 note 2 Frankel, op. cit. p. 49.

page 275 note 3 For example, the forthcoming studies of International Relations of the Western World 1969-1971, edited by Andrew Shonfield, to be published by Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

page 276 note 1 Northedge, op. cit. pB 326.

page 276 note 2 Jones, op. cit. p. 9.

page 277 note 1 Ibid. p. 176.

page 277 note 2 Frankels op. cit. p. 328.

page 277 note 3 Northedge, op. cit. p. 11.

page 278 note 1 Waltz, Kenneth, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics (London, 1968), pp. 62Google Scholar, 178.

page 278 note 2 Ibid. pp. 239, 253.

page 278 note 3 Frankel, op. cit. p . 4.

page 278 note 4 Northedge, op. cit. p . 361.

page 279 note 1 Ibid. p. 20.

page 280 note 1 Hansard, 6 Mar. 1947, col. 676.

page 281 note 2 Frankel, op. cit. p. 310.

page 282 note 1 Ibid. p. 105.

page 283 note 1 Butler, D. and Kavanagh, Dennis, The British General Election of February 1974 (London, 1974), pp. 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 62.