Britain and Russia: The Troubled Relationship

Abstract

Britain and Russia were the most important players in European politics for most of the nineteenth century.¹ The principal victors over Napoleon, they exerted a joint hegemony in European Great-Power politics from 1815 to the Crimean War.² Not only that, as the bookends of Europe, each had the luxury of withdrawing from Great-Power politics: Britain behind the moat of the English Channel; Russia behind the vast tracts separating her from the centre of Europe. In the aftermath of defeat in the Crimean War, it was Russia’s concentration on domestic affairs and Britain’s general benevolence that permitted the unifications of both Italy and Germany.