Abstract
The purpose of strategic policy was to use Britain’s military, diplomatic and economic power in order to preserve the British Empire. Although some statesmen had a premonition of Imperial decline, the psychological basis for strategic policy was an unshaken confidence that Britain could preserve the Empire.1 Nor, even considering the nature and the consequences of Britain’s decline in power, were statesmen wrong to believe this. Of course, the economic effects of the great war and trends like rising nationalism in its colonies, were eroding the foundations of Britain’s strength. Nonetheless it remained among the greatest economic and industrial nations on earth, while its military and diplomatic power countered every immediate threat to its existence. Despite the potential gap between its strength and commitments, Britain remained a formidable power. Britain’s dilemma of the 1930s, of a single-handed war against several states, does not demonstrate that its relative strength had fallen so far that it could no longer defend its empire. This situation would have threatened Britain even at the peak of its power; it had always faced grave perils whenever it fought several states by itself. The dilemma of the 1930s stemmed not so much from the decline of British power as from the failure of its diplomacy to forestall the rise of a specific international environment.
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3 The Elements of Strategic Policy, 1919–26
John Darwin, ‘Imperialism in Decline? Tendencies in British Imperial Policy Between the Wars’, Historical Journal, vol. 23 (1980);
John Gallacher, The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire (1982) pp. 73–153.
Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, 1918–1920 (1984) pp. 11–12; Orde, Britain p. 4.
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E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Peace, 1919–1939 (1980 reprint) passim;
Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (1966) passim; and
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Patrick Kyba, Covenants Without the Sword, Public Opinion and British Defence Policy, 1931–35 (1983) pp. 9–15;
Paul Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy, Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (1980) pp. 240–42.
Michael Howard, The Causes of War (1983) pp. 40–1 and
A.J.P. Taylor, Rumours of Wars (1952) pp. 75–81, offer excellent accounts of this issue.
Taylor, Rumours pp. 75–81; Paul W. Schroeder, ‘Munich and the British Tradition’, Historical Journal vol. 19 (1976).
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© 1989 John Robert Ferris
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Ferris, J.R. (1989). The Elements of Strategic Policy, 1919–26. In: The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09739-5_3
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