The Politics of Appeasement and Counterrevolution: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1939

Abstract

Speaking before the House of Commons in 1938, Sir Harold Nicolson reminded his audience that “for 250 years at least the great foundation of [British] foreign policy, what Sir Eyre Crowe called ‘a law of nature,’ has been to prevent by every means in our power the domination of Europe by any single Power or group of powers” (in Gilbert and Gott 1963: 7). For centuries, Britain had been committed to a policy of preventing a hostile power from completely dominating the continent of Europe. Britain, historically, had played the role of the “balancer” in Europe, seeking safety by making itself the linchpin of coalitions against threatening aggressors: Philip II of Spain, the France of Louis XIV and Napoleon, and Wilhelmine Germany. But after World War I, British policy took a sharply different turn: throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Britain sought, against all reason and historical experience, to appease rather than to balance the power of a threatening aggressor. This chapter argues that the central constellation of forces and threats shaping international relations throughout the interwar years was social and not territorial, as standard studies assume. The overriding concern of European statesmen during this period was not German territorial ambitions and aggression but the rise of the left in Europe and the westward spread of Bolshevism from the Soviet Union.