European diplomacy in the decades prior to the outbreak of the First World War is a well-served field of historical enquiry. The centenary of the conflict has witnessed the publication of several new landmark studies on the topic, notably Sir Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012) and Thomas Otte's July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914 (2014). The tendency of these works has been to challenge notions of German culpability for the outbreak of the conflict, or at least to nuance them, particularly in Clark's case. Andreas Rose's Between Empire and Continent seeks to contribute to this trend by stressing the agency of British diplomacy before 1914 and by qualifying the role Germany played in London's calculations in that period.
Originally published in German in 2011, this book focuses upon British foreign and defense policy between the 1890s and 1910. Its core argument is that Germany's behavior was not the primary factor that shaped British decision making during this period. Rather, Rose charges, imperial concerns and lingering rivalries with France and Russia continued to play a key role in the thinking of Britain's policy-making elites. When Germany did factor into British policy making, he claims, it was largely due to the influence of bellicosely anti-German elements in the press, or, as a form of subterfuge, perpetrated as part of the cut and thrust of party or of interservice politics.
Between Empire and Continent makes a number of potentially important contributions. First, it brings a large body of German-language scholarship on British politics and diplomacy in this period to an Anglophone audience, introducing significant points of emphasis that are less prominent in the literature in English. Second, it continues the methodological trend of seeking to incorporate the role of public opinion and domestic politics more closely with interpretations of diplomacy and international affairs. Works such as Jeremy Black's Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Eighteen Century (2007) and Daniel Brown's Palmerston and the Politics of Foreign Policy, 1846–55 (2002) have made important strides in this regard already, but the relationship between politicians, the press, the armed services, and diplomacy is surely an area into which more study is required. Third, Rose seeks to place the armed services in general, and the Royal Navy in particular, at the heart of his analysis of British power in this period. Indeed, he pulls no punches in criticizing earlier scholars in the field of naval history for failing to reach beyond their subdisciplinary wheelhouse and to engage with broader debates in the diplomatic, political, and international scholarship on the period: “naval history … still has a surprisingly long way to go if it is to move beyond bibliographies and take up the analytical reflection found in modern diplomatic histories” (5). Whether entirely fair to naval historians or not, Rose's broader point that the armed forces have for too long been at the periphery of accounts of the British state and of British diplomacy in this period is valid, and his attempts to remedy this situation are both appropriate and welcome.
Between Empire and Continent thus sets out an ambitious methodological stand, aligning itself with trends presently at the cutting edge of new scholarship in its field, and it claims to have broken significant new ground as a result. Unfortunately, its substance does not entirely live up to this billing. In purely practical terms, the book is extremely long, bearing many of the hallmarks of a work based upon a dissertation. Time and time again Rose piles up evidence in support of points that could have been made more simply, detracting from the force of his arguments in the process. The work is thus somewhat unwieldy (made worse by the use of endnotes) and difficult to read in places.
More damagingly, the book also contains significant conceptual and methodological shortcomings that raise fundamental questions about the thesis Rose propounds. The influence of public opinion on policy making is certainly an important and interesting topic; however, Anthony Morris's seminal The Scaremongers (1984) covers much the same ground as Rose and completes the task to far greater effect. Rose's claims to an entirely new approach are thus rather exaggerated. Furthermore, Rose makes virtually no effort to account for precisely what the nature of “public opinion” at this time was, or how it influenced (or did not) the decision makers he discusses. Who were the British public? How did contemporaries define its membership, or measure the weight of its opinions? As Thomas Otte's work on the role of foreign affairs in bye-elections in this period has shown, the relationship between foreign and domestic politics was complex and difficult to define with certainty. Rose's work would have benefited from a more thoroughgoing consideration of these methodological issues, which would surely have mollified some of the claims made in this book.
In a similar vein, it seems somewhat reckless to state specifically that a key strength of a book is that it incorporates a narrow subdiscipline (in this case naval history) into a broader narrative without mastering the content of said area. Naval affairs in Britain in this period are the topic of a complex and wide-ranging debate which it is not necessary to enter into here, but suffice it to say that Rose engages with only a fraction of the relevant secondary literature and almost completely eschews meaningful work in the relevant archives. The result is a muddled telling of the naval aspects of the story and a failure to achieve the laudable aim of incorporating the Royal Navy into a convincing wider picture.
Between Empire and Continent will appeal to those who wish to deemphasize Berlin's role in the currents of diplomacy which preceded the outbreak of the First World War, but it does little to strengthen their case.
