The British Foreign Office and Russia

Abstract

The previous chapter suggested that the term ‘old diplomacy’ was forged in a shifting historical and polemical environment, with the result that it never acquired a single well-defined meaning. There was, however, considerable agreement among critics of the old diplomacy about the nature and extent of its shortcomings. This chapter aims to examine the validity of some of these charges by focusing on the organisation of the British Foreign Office in the first decade of the twentieth century, along with its role in determining policy towards Russia during the years leading up to the Anglo-Russian convention of 1907. It is of course impossible to make too many generalisations about the role and influence of the Foreign Office on the basis of particular case-studies. What emerges is, however, that most critics of the Foreign Office only managed to capture a single aspect of a complex and changing picture. While the officials who worked there were certainly drawn from a narrow range of social backgrounds, many of them were intelligent individuals committed to carrying out their duties in a dedicated and professional manner. Nor is it true that senior Foreign Office officials were necessarily able to dictate the course of British foreign policy. Their influence at any one time depended on a huge number of factors ranging from the political sensitivity of the policy under review through to the determination of other administrative and political actors to assert their own authority and influence.