A History of European Diplomacy 1815-1914 (Classic Reprint)

Now that foreign affairs are, as Disraeli said, merely Britain sdomestic affairs in foreign parts, it is the duty of every citizen to know about them and to reflect upon them. Things apparently remote from foreign policy must be regarded in the light of our external relations as well as of our internal situation. And it is not merely the relations of Britain to other countries that theB ritish citizen must know about; he must understand the dealings of the other states of Europe and of the world with each other ;for the affairs of all the nations are so interwoven that no nation, and no part of any nation, can for a moment live unto itself. It is with the modest aim of contributing something towards political education that this book has been written. I have tried to continue in a more accessible form the admirable work accomplished by theS trasbourg Professor Koch, author of the Histoire abrege des traites de paix, for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England we have for the nineteenth century the grand collection of Hertslet treaties and maps, with neither comment nor narrative :a great repository of truth, but of use mainly for scholars. In France M. Boiuigeois, in his Manuel historique de politique elrangire, and M. Debidoitt, in hisH istoire diplomatique, have placed before their public the results of long study and wide observation. I have aimed at doing something like this for theB ritish citizen: to place before him a hundred years of the diplomatic relations of the chief Powers of Europe, including Great Britain, and so to give him the means of following the stream of history that flows before his own eyes from day to day, and of forming soimd judgments about it. In the quiet of anO xford College a historian can reasonably profess to write without hatred and partisanship, sine ira et studio. If he still believes in the honour and dignity
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)