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The tradition of appeasement in British foreign policy 1865–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Paul M. Kennedy
Paul M. Kennedy
Affiliation:
Reader in English and American Studies, University of East Anglia
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Extract

IF the policy of “Appeasement” is inextricably associated in the historical consciousness with the efforts of Neville Chamberlain's government to preserve peace with the dictators in the 1930s, its origins have been recognized by numerous writers as going back many years before the immediate crises concerning the Sudetenland, Prague and the Polish Corridor. Some have traced its roots to the failure to prevent Japanese aggression in 1931 or Italy's attack upon Abyssinia in 1935; others, with more sense of the positive side of “Appeasement", have focused upon the attitude of the British government and public towards Germany during and after the Versailles settlement; while Mr Gilbert, going a little further back in time, has argued that “appeasement was born” at the moment of the British declaration of war in 1914. Few, if any, commentators have suggested that one should seek the beginnings of “Appeasement” before that event, however.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , October 1976 , pp. 195 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1976

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References

page 195 note 1. Gilbert, M., The Roots of Appeasement (London, 1966), p. 9Google Scholar.

page 195 note 2. W. N. Medlicott, review of A. Furnia's Diplomacy of Appeasement in International Affairs, xxxviii (1962), pp. 84–85Google Scholar.

page 196 note 1. See especially the strong criticism of this feature in Barnett, C., The Collapse of British Power (London, 1972), pp . 20Google Scholar ff.

page 197 note 1. On the influence of economic and strategical factors upon Britain's world position after 1815, seeKennedy, P. M., The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976), pp. 149Google Scholar ff

page 198 note 1. Niedhart, G., ‘Friede als nationales Interesse: Grossbritannien in der Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs’, Neue Politische Literatur, 17 (1972), pp. 451–70Google Scholar.

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page 199 note 1. Ibid; and Jones, J. R., ‘England’, in Rogger, H. and Weber, E. (ed.), The European Right. A Historical Profile (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1965), pp. 29Google Scholar ff.

page 200 note 1. See especially, Hildebrand, K., ‘ “British Interests” als Staatsrason’, Mitteihmgen der Gesellschaft der Freunde der Universitat Mannheim e.V., Jahrgang 22, Heft 2 (1973);Google Scholaridem., ‘Von der Reichseinigung zur “Krieg-in-Sicht” Krise. Preussen-Deutschland als Faktor der britischen Aussenpolitik 1866-75’, in Sturmer, M. (ed.), Das kaiserliche Deutschland, Politik und Gesellschaft 1870–1918 (Dusseldorf, 1970)Google Scholar.

page 200 note 2. Mosse, W. E., ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: The Britis h Public and the War-Scare of November 1870’, Historical Journal, vi (1963), pp. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar ff.; and Eldridge, C. C., England's Mission. The Imperial Idea in the Age of Gladstone and Disraeli 1868–1880 (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

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page 203 note 2. Taylor, op, cit. cap. 4; Morris, A. J. A, Radicalism against War, 1906–1914. The Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

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page 204 note 3. Ibid especially pp. 420-35; Taylor, op. cit., cap. 4; Kennedy, P. M., ‘The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West 1900–1970’, Journal of Contemporary History, viii (1973), pp. 92–93Google Scholar.

page 204 note 4. Hobsbawm, E., Industry and Empire (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969), p. 207Google Scholar.

page 205 note 1. Barnett, op. cit. especially pp. 12-14, 564; Howard, M., The Continental Commitment (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1974), pp . 97Google Scholar ff.

page 205 note 2. Cited in Medlicott, W. N., British Foreign Policy since Versailles 1919–1963 (London, 1968 edn.), p. xviGoogle Scholar.

page 205 note 3. Barnett's details, in Collapse of British Power, pp. 342ff.,are very informative here.

page 205 note 4. Pelling, H., Britain and the Second World War (London, 1970), pp . 22–23Google Scholar; Howard, op, cit. pp.118-20.

page 206 note 1. Ibid p. 121.

page 206 note 2. Kennedy, British Naval Mastery, op. cit. pp.271 ff.

page 206 note 3. Cowling, M., The Impact of Labour (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar.

page 207 note 1. Cited in Howard, op. cit. p. 79.

page 207 note 2. See especially the thesis by Pugh, cited in p . 204, n. 2 above.

page 207 note 3. Thome, C., The Limits of Foreign Policy (London, 1972)Google Scholar; Lee, B. A., Britain and the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1939 (Stanford, 1973)Google Scholar.

page 207 note 4. Marder, A. J., ‘The Royal Navy and the Ethiopian Crisis of 1935–6', American Historical Review, xxv (1970)Google Scholar; Parker, R. A. C, ‘Great Britain, France and the Ethiopian Crisis, 1935–1936', English Historical Review, ixxxiv (1974)Google Scholar; Hardie, F., The Abyssinian Crisis (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

page 207 note 5. Gilbert, op. cit.; Jordan, W. M., Great Britain, France and the German Problem 1918–1939 (London, 1943)Google Scholar.

page 208 note 1. Apart from the brief synopses in Jones, ‘England’, op. cit. pp. 57–69, and Kennedy? ‘Idealists and Realists’, op. cit. pp. 153ff.,see Thompson, N., The Anti-Appeasers (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; and fresh but scattered details in Cowling, M., The Impact of Hitler (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 208 note 2. See Kipling's poem in the Daily Telegraph of 3 Nov., 1930, and the leader of that day, as an illustration of this sentiment.

page 208 note 3. Cowling, op. cit. p. 122.

page 210 note 1. Cowling, op. cit. confirms the findings of Thompson's The Anti-Appeasers in this respect.

page 211 note 1. See especially, Naylor, J. F., Labour's International Policy (London, 1969)Google Scholar.

page 211 note 2. Cowling, passim.

page 211 note 3. Kennedy, ‘Idealists and Realists’, op. cit. pp. 154 ff.

page 212 note 1. Taylor, A. J. P, The Origins of the Second World War (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1964), pp. 250–4Google Scholar.

page 212 note 2. British policy in 1939 is covered in Taylor, op. cit. pp. 244 ff.;Gilbert, M. and Gott, R., The Appeasers (London, 1969 edn.), pp . 199Google Scholar ff.; Colvin, I., The Chamberlain Cabinet (London, 1972), pp. 177–259Google Scholar; Parkinson, R., Peace for Our Time (London, 1971), pp. 89–226Google Scholar; Aster, S., 1939: The Making of the Second World War (London, 1973)Google Scholar, passim.

page 212 note 3. Gilbert and Gott, op. cit. pp. 301–26.

page 213 note 1. Kennedy, op. cit. pp. 295–8.

page 214 note 1. Gilbert, op. cit. pp. 165–8, 179–88, covers this change of attitude well.

page 214 note 2. There is, unfortunately, no ‘politico-semantic’ analysis of this word as detailed as Koebner, R. and Schmidt, H., Imperialism: the Story and Significance of a Political Word 1840–1960 (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar, but a glance at the Oxford English Dictionary's definitions of Appeasement all before 1933, when vol. 1 of the OED appeared suggests traditionally that the word implied a natural satisfaction or conciliation of desires, e.g. “appeasement of one's appetite”. No doubt t i was in this sense that C. P.Scott argued for a “peace of appeasement“ (see Gilbert, op. cit. p. 54). Only in the post-1945 dictionaries is there the added meaning of a craven surrender to threats.