British Representatives Research Articles

The British Ambassadors to Istanbul in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Sources of Intelligence and Political Reporting

This article mainly seeks to illuminate the specific methods and main sources used by the British ambassadors in Istanbul to obtain accurate intelligence for their reports to the Foreign Office. It appears that the British ambassadors used different channels for different types of information. First and foremost, they had urgent demands to know what was going on in the city. The Dragomans played a principal role in meeting that need. Their ability to get intelligence in advance on specific events was undeniable. Similarly, the British citizens and newspaper correspondents supported the embassy from another spot with some other details of the matter. It was of the greatest value to the embassy to have information on a regular basis from all over the Ottoman territories. The extensive Consulate establishment in the East certainly served for this purpose. The consuls acted as de facto intelligence agents in their respective areas, notably, in places where they were close to the Empire's borders. The intercourse between the British embassy and the other friendly courts in Istanbul also produced valuable information. The reports of the British military officers sent to the embassy can be counted within this context as well. All these channels served to get information mainly by uncovered means. However, the British representatives also used more covert means which resembled the twentieth century forms of intelligence gathering. In this type of activities they used three mechanisms. In the first instance, the Ottoman high officials were the actors, and information in these cases was supplied in more devious ways. In the second model, there was an 'outlying' department required to be served by agents not recognised as belonging to the Embassy. The persons working in this can be categorised as secret agents. In the third formation, there were unofficial negotiators who acquired the sympathy and confidence of the Ottomans. In addition to their negotiating ability, and position as secret go-between the two sides, these people also furnished the embassy with very important information about the particular events and subjects. It is evident however that the British ambassadors used the covert means quite effectively. Many important documents obtained and events learned through these mechanisms.

Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

Eric Williams and the Making of the Modern Caribbean

The 1950 ‘Ambassador's agreement’ on USAF bases in the UK and British fears of US atomic unilateralism

The article explores the 1950 ‘Ambassador's Agreement’ (named after US Ambassador Lewis Douglas) about establishing long-term US air bases in the UK. During the discussions British representatives expressed resentment of American pressure and were concerned about the expense that developing the bases for American purposes might entail. There were even fears that Washington might use the airfields to launch an atomic bomb attack on the USSR without regard to the views of the UK government. The British consented to providing the bases because they wanted to enmesh the US further in UK and Western European defence. For their part American negotiators had wanted to further US atomic strategy without delay. Although the agreement imposed no restriction on the use of the airfields, some US officials believed that in a crisis the UK government might try to prevent them being used for atomic bombing missions.

Contraceptive provision in genitourinary medicine clinics in the UK

The objective of this study was to assess current and future contraceptive provision in genitourinary (GU) medicine clinics in the United Kingdom. Questionnaires were sent to 18 British Co-Operative Clinical Group regional representatives for distribution to clinical leads. Of 185 clinics, 124 (67%) responded. All clinics provided condoms, 116 (94%) the 'morning after' pill and 31 (25%) would fit an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUCD) for emergency contraception. Twenty-three (18.5%) regarded their clinic as already providing a comprehensive service and most of these could provide a wide range of contraceptive methods. Of all clinics, which included eight (34%) clinics already providing a comprehensive service, 69 (56%) anticipated developing their contraceptive provision within the next five years. In conclusion, contraceptive provision varies between clinics. A reduction in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) would most likely be achieved if clinics expanded their provision of contraceptive services.

Great Britain and Her Efforts for the Establishment and Maintenance of the European Commission of the Danube (1855-1858)

The paper analyses the position of the British diplomats regarding the question of establishing a regime of free navigation on the maritime sector of the Danube. As the economic interests of English or French merchants, eager to conquer the grain commerce of the Romanian Principalities, were threatened at the Lower Danube by natural or artificial obstacles tolerated by the Russian authorities, the Sulina controversy was among the great international litigations that European diplomats wished to solve in the context of the Crimean War. During the Conference of Vienna (1855) and at the Congress of Paris (1856), debates around the international regime of the Danube were very complicated. The British representatives, acting in common with their French colleagues, fought for the establishment of a European Commission of the Danube, an international committee whose mission was to improve the conditions of navigation at the mouths of the river. The Eastern Empires, Russia and Austria, were opposing this initiative of the Maritime Powers, which endangered their own economic supremacy in the region. Thus, the initial success of establishing the European Commission had to followed by intensive efforts in order to make this body as solid and efficient as possible.

Statistics as the science of government: The stillborn British Empire statistical bureau, 1918–20

The 1920 British Empire Statistical Conference was the direct outcome of the Dominions Royal Commission's Final Report, which had spelt out the need to increase the uniformity and comparability of statistics originating from various parts of the Empire and had proposed setting up an imperial central statistical office. Over 24 days, delegates debated a large number of topics, ranging from the practical and empirical subject matters of statistical inquiry to more abstract issues such as the nature and object of statistical data collection and analysis, and to the problems raised by the establishment of a statistical bureau that would operate on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to understand why, despite apparently favourable conditions, this project soon ended in complete failure. The reasons must be sought in the neatly distinctive outlooks held by the British government and Dominion representatives as regards the function of statistics for the purpose of government, in the quite different bureaucratic settings that embodied and sustained these views, as well as in the tensions and centrifugal pressures that acted upon inter-imperial relations following the Great War.

La Gran Bretaña frente al México amenazado, 1835–1848

How would Britain support Mexico during its crisis with the United States over Texas? To answer this question, Josefina Zoraida Vázquez explores diplomatic papers documenting the relationship between Mexico and Great Britain. Although Vázquez’s impressive list of previous publications includes studies of the early Mexican Republic and the United States, this work broadens the view to evaluate Britain’s role. The slim volume consists of a brief introductory study followed by the important documents upon which it is based. Vazquéz studies the relationship between Mexico and Great Britain beginning with the asiento of 1713, which gave British trade an entry into the Spanish Empire. The British government wanted a commercial agreement with Mexico, despite King George IV’s objection to recognizing Mexican independence. The United States and Great Britain were competing for business and influence in Mexico, although the latter was clearly dominant. Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston, as the Foreign Minister in the Whig government, recognized Texas in 1840, believing that Mexico could not retake it.In 1841, Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative government put George Hamilton-Gordon, Lord Aberdeen, in the Foreign Office. Lord Aberdeen wanted to block U.S. expansionism, and he considered joining forces with France to do so. He decided, however, that war with the United States was an impossible risk to British commerce. Aberdeen urged Mexico to recognize Texas independence in order to safeguard California. But Antonio López de Santa Anna wanted to conquer Texas instead.When the war came, Britain stayed neutral and used that position to expand business opportunities. Lord Palmerston and the Whigs were back in power in 1846. British representatives in Mexico were intermediaries in the peace negotiations. José María Luis Mora, representing Mexico in London, tried to persuade Palmerston to guarantee the peace treaty. Palmerston declined, saying that both Parliament and the United States would need to approve such a commitment, which was unlikely.Vázquez concludes that British policy supported British interests. Under both Palmerston and Aberdeen, those interests were largely commercial, even before the 1846 settlement with the United States on Oregon. Mexican leaders hoped for British support, since Mexico was a needed source of silver and Mexico had been assured that she was a special ally. British interests at the time, however, were less concerned with the potential for trade and investment in Mexico than with the actual enormous volume of trade between Britain and the United States.About one-third of the documents printed in the book are from the British Foreign Office files in the Public Records Office. The balance are from the Archivo Histórico “Genero Estrada” of the Mexican Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores. Only two documents date before 1844. The many documents included from the 1844-48 period substantiate the major points of Vázquez’s introductory study.In addition to access to the archival documents in Spanish, this book makes two historiographic contributions. The central part of the study is meticulously documented from archives, producing an ideal example of research for students. Vázquez also provides a good example of the value of British sources in Latin American historiography.

Tribes and telegraphs in lower Iraq: The Muntafiq and the Baghdad–Basrah telegraph line of 1863–65

The introduction of the electric telegraph into the tribal areas of lower Iraq in the early 1860s was a major component in the Ottoman policy of imposing central authority over the unruly tribes inhabiting that area.' During the implementation of this policy the Sublime Porte was confronted with one of the major tribes of lower Iraq, the Muntafiq. At the same time, the Indo-European telegraph line project, and its passage through Iraq, was an expression of the increasing British involvement in Iraq and Iraqi affairs. The role played by some British representatives in Iraq during the clash between the Ottoman authorities and the Muntafiq is a further example of such an involvement. Iraq came under Ottoman rule when it was occupied by Suleiman Qanuni (also called 'the Magnificent') in 1534. The country was divided into the three vilayets (provinces) of Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah, each headed by a vali (goveruor), with both the vali and vilayet of Baghdad enjoying a higher status and prestige in relation to the other two. The population of Iraq around 1850 was estimated at 1,600,000.2 Only 20 per cent of this number were urban dwellers, while the majority of the population consisted of tribesmen, who were either nomads3 (in search of agricultural grazing land or plunder and booty in settled areas) or settled and semi-settled (living as peasants in villages).4 Although nominally subjects of the Ottoman sultan and his representatives, the valis of Iraq, the true loyalty of these tribes was to their shaykhs (chief of a tribe) and their tribal tradition. Each tribe had its own defined area of influence in which only its own members were entitled to utilize the land, whether for grazing, cultivation or any other purpose which was approved by their shaykh. The tribal claims to land ownership and independence ran counter to the Sublime Porte's view that all conquered lands were state property, and their inhabitants the sultan's subjects. In the age of pre-modern (and westernstyle) nationalism, the loyalty of the inhabitants of the Ottoman empire was

Russia, Britain and the blockade – Peter Struve and the restriction of enemy supplies committee

The history of the Russian Restriction of Enemy Supplies Committee has always remained obscure. The committee, which was formed in 1915 to oversee the Russian blockade of Germany, was chaired by Professor Peter Struve, the leading liberal thinker and economist, and his appointment was the sole success of the liberal campaign for the inclusion in government of those who could be said to represent the country at large. On the basis of archival material available in Britain, this article places the committee in the context of the wartime alliance, and explores the reasons for the presence on the committee of a number of British representatives. It is argued that in addition to its importance to the allied blockade of Germany, the committee was an important link between Britain and Russia, especially at a time when British support for liberalism and liberalisation in Russia was becoming increasingly overt.

John F. Kennedy and the Limited Test Ban Treaty: A Case Study of Presidential Leadership

John F. Kennedy's foreign policy leadership style has evoked contradictory historical evaluations. The early assessments written by administration officials like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Theodore Sorensen, and Roger Hilsman depicted Kennedy as a consummate pragmatist, skilled crisis manager, and, more generally, a great world leader.(1) Kennedy's almost heroic reputation as a foreign policy leader came under attack for the first time in the early 1970s with publication of works by David Halberstam, Louise Fitzsimons, Richard J. Walton, and Henry Fairlie.(2) Whereas Halberstam put at least some of the blame for America's unfortunate involvement in the Vietnam War on Kennedy's shoulders, the work of the three other writers referred to Kennedy as the great cold warrior and considered his foreign policy as imperialist in fact, if not in intent. Neither the portrayal of Kennedy as a decisive and courageous statesman nor his depiction as an irresponsible and dogmatic cold warrior went unchallenged in light of growing insight into the U.S. policy-making process during the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Emerging from the new body of sources and literature of the 1980s was a far more ambiguous Kennedy, whose foreign policy decisions were often characterized by vacillation and indecisiveness, marked by rhetorical overkill on one hand and restrained pragmatism on the other. At the same time, it became clear that Kennedy's ambiguity often had to be attributed to the interplay of domestic and foreign concerns and their influence on Kennedy's foreign policy.(3) Despite the considerable number of books and articles written about Kennedy, his foreign policy achievements and presidential leadership style still await a balanced assessment.(4) This article contributes to our understanding of Kennedy's foreign policy by examining Kennedy's leadership in successfully concluding the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT). The authors conclude that Kennedy pursued the goal of signing a nuclear test ban with vigor and persistence from his first days in office through the trilateral debate of the treaty's language among American, Soviet, and British representatives in July 1963. Before the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, however, Kennedy felt that his domestic as well as his foreign policy position was too weak to take on arguments of those opposed to negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. Kennedy's room for maneuver expanded with successful conclusion of the Cuban missile crisis. The months leading up to the final, two-week-long negotiation of the LTBT were marked by Kennedy's willingness to use his greater political freedom and take the lead in pushing the test ban. In doing so, he was prepared to take considerable risks both domestically and in terms of U.S. relations with its allies. The test ban case reveals Kennedy as an active and flexible but still cautious president. His personal leadership and flexible organization of the policy process features that might have been a weakness regarding decision making on other issues formed the basis for successful negotiation of the first effective arms control agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union. While Kennedy was clearly not the cold warrior that Fitzsimons, Walton, and Fairlie accused him of being, his foreign policy decisions were subject to political considerations related to domestic and foreign pressures to a far greater degree than Schlesinger, Sorensen, and Hilsman lead the reader to believe with their emphasis on Kennedy's personal skills as a foreign policy leader and crisis manager. Senator Kennedy, a Nuclear Test Ban, and Nuclear Nonproliferation The issue of a nuclear test ban was not a new one in the 1960s. American, Soviet, British, and French delegations had discussed draft agreements to end nuclear weapons tests as early as the Truman administration. But during the early years of the cold war, the arms control and disarmament talks in Geneva never really left the realm of propaganda, and no substantive progress on the test ban issue was achieved. …

'Revolution was in the Air' : British Officials in Russia during the First World War

The first English diplomats who arrived in Russia during the second half of the sixteenth century viewed the country with a mixture of repulsion and fascination. Giles Fletcher, who was sent to Russia by Elizabeth I in 1588, condemned 'the open and barbarous' system of government which denied even the most elementary freedoms and security to the population.' Fletcher's successors in the following centuries generally took the same view, though the more intelligent among them recognized that the centralization of power in the hands of a single ruler probably represented the only effective means of establishing political order in a vast and potentially anarchic empire. By the beginning of the twentieth century, British officials in Petersburg may no longer have considered the Russian political system to be a 'plaine tyranicall' form of oriental despotism. Nevertheless, while two hundred years of integration into the European state system had helped to make Russia more familiar to the political and diplomatic elites of Western Europe, the autocratic system of government continued to offend the sensibilities of many British representatives who were posted to the Russian capital. Although the composition of the British Diplomatic Service was changing rapidly by the beginning of the century, it continued to draw the vast majority of its members from the aristo

"So Many Little Republics": British Negotiations with the Choctaw Confederacy, 1765

The Choctaw Indians known to European colonizers of the eighteenth century were a multiethnic confederacy that had emerged in the protohistoric period. This essay reviews that process and uses the 1765 British treaty and land grant negotiations with the Choctaw to show how the Choctaw continued to insist on the divisional autonomy that reflected their ethnic diversity, even after a hundred years of contact. In March 1765, the Choctaw met with British representatives in Mobile to negotiate a boundary and land cessions in that city's vicinity. It was well after the close of the French and Indian War had spelled the end of the French colony of Louisiana east of the Mississippi and thus of the longstanding alliance between the Choctaw and the French. Not only were the Choctaw adjusting to the relative disadvantage of having only one European power to deal with, people intoxicated with their success who regard themselves as the masters of the world, but they were forced to reckon with a former enemy as well.1 The Choctaw were not at a loss, however. The elegiac tone that we perceive today in their public utterances on this occasion stems more from our knowledge of their eventual displacement than from their attitude at the time. As they had been doing since the first encounter with Europeans, the Choctaw adapted to the world as they apprehended it and attempted to force others to accommodate them. In this essay I am going to look at the 1765 congress for evidence that one hundred years of European contact had not made the Choctaw into what the Europeans wanted them to be-a single entity with which they could deal as such. Instead, the congress reflects the persistence and adaptability of the heterarchical, multiethnic confederacy of autonomous Ethnohistory 41:4 (fall 1994). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethnohistory. ccc ooI4-I8oI/94/$I.5o. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.113 on Wed, 05 Oct 2016 04:33:21 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

De Lattre, la conférence de Singapour et ses suites

In may 1951, at Singapour there was an important conference between French and British representatives, with the American presence, about the equivalent situations in Indochina and Malasya in front of the Communists. General de Lattre, who was High Commissionner of the French Republic and Commander-in-Chief in Indochina, seems to compel himself in these discussions as the official representative of the French Government. He intended to extend the debate to the broad question of the security in South-East of Asia by the institution of a « strategie reserve » and he expected that Tonkin will be declared an « essentiel part of South-East Asia ». He will not succeed to obtain a resuit on these points, but the Singapour conference prepared his offensive of diplomatie persuasion in Washington in september of 1951 and in London, in october. The conference too can be seen as a new stake for the interpretation of the Indochinese conflict, not simply as a colonial war but as one of the sides of the confrontation between « Free World » and « Soviet Bloc ».

A handlist of British diplomatic representatives, 1509-1688

A handlist of British diplomatic representatives, 1509-1688

Features

It was one of the Almighty's little jokes to place the British and the French so close together and make them so entirely different in mental habits. The British hardly ever clear‐sightedly address themselves to establishing a policy — on anything. In Britain a “policy” is what you accidentally find you have after taking a number of ad hoc decisions on related matters. The French, and to a lesser extent other Continental peoples, are inclined to decide first to have a policy, then to decide what it should be in general terms and only finally to translate that general policy into detailed implementation. At European meetings it is therefore common for a proposition to be advanced in extremely general terms…often surrounded by clauses beginning “whereas”, “recalling”, “considering”, the kind of thing which characterises United Nations resolutions but is foreign to the economical language of a British Cabinet minute. At this point the eyes of the British representatives glaze over.

The Shiite issue in Iraqi politics, 1941

In the April 1988 number of Middle Eastern Studies I published a despatch of December 1950 from the British Ambassador in Baghdad dealing with SunniShiite tensions and both their immediate and their more remote causes. As I wrote in the introductory note preceding the despatch, to judge by the records, the Shiite problem in Iraqi politics is hardly ever reported or discussed by British officials or representatives in Iraq. This was certainly the case in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of Anglo-Iraqi hostilities following Rashid Ali's seizure of power at the beginning of April 1941. Nor is there any evidence that in the period immediately following the collapse of Rashid Ali's movement, the British Ambassador, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, thought it worthy of his attention. The issue, interestingly enough, was raised neither by the Foreign Office nor by the Baghdad Embassy, but by the War Office. The Foreign Office files include the copy of a telegram of 6 May 1941 sent by the War Office to the General in command of the British troops at Basra and repeated to the Commander-in-Chief, Middle East. The telegram declared:

Portrait of a Nineteenth-Century Iranian Statesman: The Life and Times of Grand Vizier Amīn Ud-Dawlah, 1844–1904

In 1898, with Great Britain and Russia vying for political and economic dominance of Iran, Grand Vizier Mīrzā Alī Khān Amīn ud-Dawlah set in motion a cycle of events that, during the early part of the twentieth century, led to the downfall of the Qājārs, a dynasty he had spent his entire professional career serving. What initiated this cycle was the negotiation for a loan from Great Britain, sought partially for governmental expenses but mostly to finance a trip by the Shah to Europe. To obtain this loan, Amīn ud-Dawlah mortgaged the revenues of Iran's two most important customs houses in the south (Bushehr and Kermanshah), and also allowed those two departments to come under the control and administration of the British-owned Imperial Bank of Persia. In return for these astonishing concessions, the Bank advanced £50,000 to Grand Vizier Amin ud-Dawlah for emergency expenditures. The remainder, a mere £200,000, was to be paid upon completion of negotiations with the British Government. British bankers and diplomats in Tehran, aware of the sensitivity of the Grand Vizier's extraordinary decision, urged London to complete the negotiations as soon as possible. In the view of British representatives in Tehran this was imperative if temporary control of the customs houses was to become “a permanent institution.” However, negotiations dragged on long enough to give Russia and the Grand Vizier's rivals a chance to successfully frustrate the negotiations. Failure to obtain this British loan forced Grand Vizier Amīn ud-Dawlah to resign.

The Development of the Governor-Generalship of the Sudan, 1899–1934

Following the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of the Sudan, British unwillingness either to annex the territory or to allow its reincorporation with Egypt was given expression in the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1899, under the terms of which Britain and Egypt were to rule jointly. But the ' Condominium Agreement' was in reality a device by which Britain managed and Egypt paid for the Sudan's administration. The central figure in that administration was the Governor-General, who, although formally appointed by the ruler of Egypt, was the nominee of the British government.The development of the Governor-Generalship from its inception until the resignation of Sir John Maffey in 1934 owed less to the formal arrangements set down in the Condominium Agreement than it did to relations between the Sudan Government and successive British representatives in Cairo, and to changes in the Governor-General's own position within the Sudan Government. He remained pre-eminent throughout the period under review, but by 1934 his relative independence of Cairo was balanced by the power, within the Sudan Government, of a Council of senior officials.

The family Paraonidae (Polychaeta) in british waters: a new species and new records with a key to species

Aricidea laubieri sp.nov. and six other species of the Paraonidae new to the British Isles were found during benthic surveys in the Celtic and North Seas. These increase the number of British representatives of the family to 15. New records of a further seven species are given, which in several cases extend the known geographical or bathymetric range. The identity of some previous records attributed to Aricidea Jeffreysii (McIntosh, 1879) and to Aricidea suecica Eliason, 1920, is discussed. A dichotomous key to British species is presented.

Conference Report Mineralization associated with acid magmatism and other aspects of ore geology

The first part of the title of this conference is also the title of an international group co-ordinating research in this field. This meeting was held at the request of the Group's British representatives and produced varied group of papers covering mineralization in both the volcanic and plutonic associations. It had been hoped that Dr M. Štemprok would give an opening address but, as he was unable to be present, Dr Alan Bromley kindly stepped into the breach. In a very comprehensive survey of the field he commenced with the problem of the generation of granitic magmas particularly those associated with subduction zones, because at this plate juncture we often see a zoning of metallic deposits which suggests derivation of the metals from the subduction zone, with perhaps the rising granite magmas acting only as carriers. The metals probably move as complex halide ions with, perhaps for tin, the possibility of fluoride, liberated from the breakdown of apatite, being the carrier ion. Bromley emphasized the importance of manganese nodules as carriers of many metals down the subduction zones but not of tin and tungsten. He noted that in Cornwall, joints in mineralized areas are coated with much manganese and posed the question, 'Does manganese give a broad halo useful in exploration in such areas?' Manganese nodules and the sediments of layer 1 of the oceanic crust could supply the metals of deposits in the zones nearest to the trenches. However, the genesis of tin and tungsten ores seems