Introduction — The Approach Taken: Why Britain, France and the United States?

Abstract

This book is about the trilateral relationship between France, Britain and the United States in the twentieth century. It aims to blend the disciplines generally known as ‘international history’ and the history of international thought to show how (mainly) the foreign policy elites of these three countries came to terms with the shifting balance of power in international relations (IR) over the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the ‘Fall of France’ in 1940. A further volume will take the story up to 1990, with a coda about developments until the end of the century. This book could therefore maybe have been entitled ‘What have the French ever done for us?’ Certainly a key focus will be on the way these elites conducted their foreign policy and how they reflected on the profound changes they saw in the world around them over a century unparalleled in its barbarity and violent change. Another will be on how the very conceptualization of IR itself shifted during this period as a result of the interaction between the three groups and their respective national environments. The hope is that taking this approach will shed some light on the evolution of thinking about IR by taking seriously not just writings about international (and national) politics but also what policy makers wrote and said to each other in immediate reactions to events.