British World Policy and the Projection of Global Power, c.1830–1960, ed. T.G. Otte

Abstract

This is a collection published in memory of Keith Neilson who died in 2015. Neilson was a leading force in the band of talented Canadian historians who helped to rescue the study of British imperial diplomacy from the gloomy orthodoxies of the ‘Weary Titan’ school, which saw Britain as a played-out great power even before 1914. A cast of distinguished contributors, and a series of penetrating essays, is a fitting tribute and a valuable addition to the literature on Britain’s world-power century. Its twin themes are the almost infinite complexities of Britain’s accumulated commitments as a global power, and the advantages conferred by its (and especially London’s) role as the hub of global communications for much of the nineteenth century and a good part of the twentieth. Thomas Otte (best known, perhaps, for his superbly forensic dissection of the decisions and decision-makers of July 1914) and the intelligence historian J.R....