Abstract
Without motives appeasement would make no sense at all, unless one is determined to regard it as sheer cowardice or mindless surrender. Since simplistic explanations offer so little in the way of an answer, the search for motives might prove more fruitful. But motive is an elusive quality too, difficult to document or “prove,” and always hard to relate to specific decisions or events. It is not even possible to assume that all motives fall neatly into one category.
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Notes
A. L. Rowse, Appeasement: A Study in Political Decline, 1933–1939 (New York, 1961), especially pp. 117–119 emphasizes class interests as responsible for appeasement. This explanation was criticized as untenable by George A. Lanyi, “The Problem of Appeasement,” World Politics, XV (January, 1963), pp. 325–326.
In 1801 Great Britain had to refuse a call for military assistance from Portugal, her last ally on the Continent, because it was “… not in the power of your Majesty, consistent with a due regard to the safety of your Kingdom.” The Later Correspondence of George III, ed. by A. Aspinall (Cambridge, 1967), III, p. 511, Cabinet minute [1801, Lord Hawkesbury’s handwriting]. “… In our wooden walls alone must we place our trust; we should make a sad business of it on shore,” wrote Marquis Cornwallis that same year. Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, ed. by Charles Ross (London, 1859), III, p. 380, Cornwallis to Ross, August 4, 1801. Lord Minto, after a conversation with the King, concluded that, as a result of Pitt’s resignation, “the prosecution of the war became perhaps impossible…” The Paget Papers (London, 1896), I, p. 29, Lord Minto to the Hon. A. Paget, January 4, 1802. The Chiefs of Staff reported to the government on March 22, 1938 that Britain was not ready for war and that it was essential to gain time. Keith Robbins, Munich, 1938 (London, 1968), p. 201. Robbins gives the date as March 28. See, however, Keith Middlemas, The Diplomacy of Illusion: The British Government and Germany, 1937–39 (London, 1972), pp. 192–193 and Ian Colvin, The Chamberlain Cabinet (New York, 1971), pp. 111–112. The future Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Ironside, noted in his diary just before Munich that Chamberlain was “right,” for exposure to a German attack would be suicidal. Quoted in W. N. Medlicott, British Foreign Policy since Versailles, 1919–1963 (London, 1968), p. 181.
Robbins, op. cit., pp. 96–99.
F. S. Northedge, The Troubled Giant. Great Britain Among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (New York, 1966), p. 387.
See the contemporary estimate of William Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, by his sons Robert Isaac and Samuel Wilberforce (London, 1838), II, pp. 91–92. Pitt’s financial warfare led one observer to ask: “I should like to know who was Chancellor of the Exchequer to Atilla.” Ibid., II, p. 92 footnote.
J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III, 1760–1815, The Oxford History of England, vol. 12 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 373–374; A. W. Ward and G. P. Gooch, ed., The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919 (Cambridge, 1939), I, pp. 265–266. See also the perceptive comments of Edward Ingram, “British Strategy and High Command, 1783–1819: a Bibliographical Review,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, No. 2 (1972), pp. 165–172.
Robbins, op. cit., pp. 201–202 has a detailed discussion of the implications of the fighter versus the bomber. See also Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion, p. 221 who emphasizes the financial considerations which led to the preference of the fighter plane over the bomber.
J. H. Rose, William Pitt and National Revival (London, 1911), passim.
Geoffrey Bruun, Europe and the French Imperium, 1799–1814 (New York, 1938), pp. 100–101.
Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802, Fontana books edit. (London, 1961), p. 167.
David Thomson, England in the Twentieth Century, The Pelican History of England: 9 (London, 1965), p. 144.
As quoted in Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain (London, 1946), p. 269.
Ibid., p. 314. For Baldwin’s contributions to rearmament, and the differences between his position and Chamberlain’s, as to its role in England’s foreign policy, see Keith Middlemas and John Barnes, Baldwin. A Biography (New York, 1970), especially pp. 1025–1026.
D. C. Watt, “Sir Warren Fisher and British rearmament against Germany,” in D. C. Watt, Personalities and Policies. Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (South Bend, 1965), p. 113.
The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London, 1820), XXXVI, pp. 87–92.
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), p. 326.
Bruun, op. cil., p. 43.
Prussia reluctantly evacuated Hanover when the League of Armed Neutrality had failed. It has been pointed out already that George III was inclined to accept the peace preliminaries because his allies had deserted him. Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury, ed. by the third Earl (London, 1845), IV, p. 65. The significance of the victory in Egypt is spelled out by Edward Ingram, “A Preview of the Great Game in Asia — III: the Origins of the British Expedition to Egypt in 1801,” Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (October 1973), pp. 296–314.
The social question during the war with France led to savage repression by ministers fearful of a domestic revolution. The agitation caused by the industrial expansion of the 1790’s, and the high price of provisions, furnished enough combustible material to make the Addington cabinet immediately reopen negotiations for peace.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 403.
Ibid., p. 253.
“If you want to understand Munich, you must look to Japan,” declared Sir Horace Wilson, R. John Pritchard, “The Far East as an Influence on the Chamberlain Government’s Pre-War European Policies,” Millennium, II (1973–1974), pp. 7–23 (the Wilson quote is from p. 21).
Feiling, op. cit., p. 325.
Robbins, op. cit., p. 267.
Feiling, op. cit., pp. 323, 324 letter of January 16, 1938.
Watt, Personalities and Policies, pp. 139–158, 159–174; Robbins, op. cit., pp. 155–157.
Pritchard, op. cit., pp. 7–23.
Edward Ingram, “The Defence of British India-I: The Invasion Scare of 1798,” Journal of Indian History, 48 (1970), pp. 565–584; Edward Ingram, “A Preview of the Great Game in Asia — III: The Origins of the British Expedition to Egypt in 1801,” and “A Preview, etc., — IV: British Agents in the Near East in the War of the Second Coalition, 1798–1801,” Middle Eastern Studies, IX (October, 1973), pp. 296–314, and X (January, 1974), pp. 15–35.
S. Maccoby, English Radicalism, 1786–1832: from Paine to Cobbett (London, 1955), p. 94.
Jules Dechamps, Les Iles britanniques et la Révolution française (1789–1803) (Brussels, 1949), pp. 55–56.
The Life of William Wilberforce, II, p. 114, November 16, 1795.
Public meetings were of course illegal, unless the local authorities permitted them, and reprinting the words of Paine would land the printer in jail. Yet both happened during the 1790’s. See e.g. Maccoby, op. cit., p. 142.
Carl B. Cone, Burke and the Nature of Politics. Vol. 2, The Age of the French Revolution (Lexington, Ky., 1964), p. 498.
Ibid., p. 421.
The War Speeches of William Pitt the Younger, selected by R. Coupland, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1940), p. 306.
M. G. Jones, Hannah More (Cambridge, 1952), p. 147 writes “It is probable that the Tracts [of Hannah More] did check disaffection and infidelity. The Prime Minister seemed to think so…”
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Vintage paperback ed. (New York, 1966), passim.
For the landing at Fishguard, see E. H. S. Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain (Cardiff, 1950), passim. An interesting picture of the apprehension it caused in London can be found in a letter written nine days after the event, The Journal of Mary Frampton, 1779–1846, ed. by H. G. Mundy (London, 1885), pp. 93–94, Lady Elizabeth Talbot to Lady Harriet Fox Strangways, March 3, 1797.
Francis E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent (Chapel Hill, 1944), p. 24.
See chapter II, footnote 18.
The phrase quoted is from a contemporary newspaper article by William Cobbett, “To the Rt. Hon. Henry Addington,” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, March 20, 1802, p. 265.
Pitt was quickly aware of the importance of Bonaparte’s coup d’état on November 9, 1799. He sent a long memorandum which raised the question of a royal restoration, and of a peace offer, to General Charles Stuart. E. Stuart Wortley, A Prime Minister and His Son: From the Correspondence of the 3rd Earl of Bute and of Lt.-General The Hon. Charles Stuart (London, 1925), pp. 322–323, Mr. Pitt to Sir Charles Stuart, December 1, 1799. Cornwallis, in Ireland at this time, viewed Bonaparte’s coup as tending “to discredit the plan of putting down established governments…” Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis, ed. by Charles Ross (London, 1859), III, p. 148, Cornwallis to Ross, November 29, 1799. “The cause of republicanism is over…” wrote Robert Southey to Samuel T. Coleridge on December 23, 1799. New Letters of Robert Southey, ed. by Kenneth Curry (New York, 1965), I, p. 211. George Canning, until March 1799 Under Secretary of Foreign Affairs, was jubilant about the change in France and sent letters to his friends, Lord Granville Leveson Gower and Lord Boringdon. Lord Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence, 1781–1821 (London, 1917), I, p. 273, Canning to Lord Gower, November 19, 1799; A. G. Stapleton, George Canning and his times (London, 1859), p. 43, “Buonaparte may flourish, but the idol of Jacobinism is no more.” Canning to Lord Boringdon, November 19, 1799.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 287. In this connection, the General Strike of 1926 had made a profound impression on the leaders of the Conservative party. See Margaret George, The Warped Vision. British Foreign Policy, 1933–1939 (Pittsburgh, 1965) p. 24.
Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Long Week-End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918–1939. Norton paperback ed. (New York, 1963), pp. 403–406.
A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945. The Oxford History of England, vol. 15 (Oxford, 1965), p. 346.
Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930–1939, Vol. I (New York, 1966), pp. 342, 346, May 18, June 6, 1938. See also the comments of John A. Garraty, “The New Deal, National Socialism and the Great Depression,” American Historical Review, 78 (October, 1973), pp. 936–938.
Taylor, English History, p. 374; George, op. cit., p. 22.
Martin Gilbert, The Roots of Appeasement (New York, 1966), p. 162. Lord Cornwallis had paid Bonaparte a similar compliment when meeting him. He praised the First Consul for “having rescued his country from the confusion and anarchy [i.e., Jacobinism] by which it had been so long oppressed.” Cornwallis Correspondence, III, p. 400. Marquis Cornwallis to Lord Hawkesbury, December 3, 1801.
As quoted in Henri Noguères, Munich. “Peace for Our Time” (New York, 1965), p. 65. Henderson, unable to deliver Halifax’s letter to Ribbentrop, spoke with State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker instead. Explaining its contents he added: “We should not let it [the May crisis] get out of hand, for then the only ones to profit would be the Communists.” Loc. cit.
As quoted in Northedge, op. cit., pp. 519–520.
John E. Wrench, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times (London, 1955), pp. 362, 376.
Ibid., p. 375; Taylor, English History, p. 405; Watt, Personalities and Policies, pp. 12, 163.
House of Commons Debate, Fifth Series, Vol. 270, p. 632.
George, op. cit., p. 51.
G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin (London, 1952), p. 174.
House of Commons Debate, Fifth Series, Vol. 270, p. 638.
As quoted in Iain Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (New York, 1962), p. 262. See also Feiling, op. cit., p. 321.
J. Holland Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), p. 322.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 372.
Life of William Wilberforce, III, pp. 10–11, July 30, 1801.
The Wynne Diaries, ed. by Anne Fremantle, Vol. III, 1798–1820 (London, 1940), p. 30, Captain Thomas Fremantle to Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle, February 20, 1801.
The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826, ed. by the Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale (London, 1901), I, p. 152.
Keith Robbins, Munich, 1938, especially pp. 14–46, 123–132.
George, The Warped Vision, passim, reviews this loss of nerve among the Conservative leadership in great detail.
Watt, Personalities and Policies, pp. 117–135.
As quoted in Christopher Thorne, The Approach of War, 1938–1939 (New York, 1968), p. 16.
The History of The Times, 1921–1948 (London, 1952), p. 913. Franklin R. Gannon, The British Press and Germany, 1936–1939 (Oxford, 1971), p. 63.
History of The Times, pp. 901, 913.
Mrs. Henry Sandford, Thomas Poole and his friends (London, 1888), I, pp. 164, 221–222, II, p. 4. Even the commander of the British troops during their unsuccessful expedition to Holland in 1799 expressed an unusual appreciation for the French. They were “perfectly civilized,” wrote Sir Ralph Abercromby to his family, October 31, 1799. Lieutenant-General Sir Ralph Abercromby K.B., 1793–1801. A memoir by his son James, Lord Dunferline (Edinburgh, 1861),p. 201.
Christopher Hobhouse, Fox (London, 1947), p. 188.
Ibid., p. 235. The first quote is from a letter to Charles Grey of October 22, 1801.
Thorne, op. cit., p. 20, in referring to Chamberlain, states “Appeasement became a mission…” Feiling, op. cit., p. 365 called Chamberlain’s policies “an act of faith.” Addington told the American minister in London that “neither success nor adversity would change their wishes” for peace. It is strange that he would express himself so categorically to a minor diplomat. The Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, ed. by Charles R. King (New York, 1896), III, p. 443, May 6, 1801. See also Malmesbury, op. cit., IV, p. 29, March 4, 1801, “Addington’s mind is full of peace…”
Although Pitt may have advised and supported Addington in the negotiations with France, he bore no responsibility for the treaty, and many thought at the time that he had deliberately done so. On Baldwin’s reluctance to see Hitler, see Tom Jones, A Diary with Letters, 1931–1950 (London, 1954), pp. 194–205.
It might be pointed out that in law the concept of precedent is largely based on comparisons.
Steven T. Ross, European Diplomatic History, 1789–1815: France against Europe (New York, 1969), pp. 60–62; Bryant, Years of Endurance, pp. 98–99.
Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of J. B. Fortescue, Esq., preserved at Dropmore, Vol. II (London, 1894), p. 327, The Marquis of Buckingham to Lord Grenville, November 8, 1792. The day France declared war on Britain (February 1, 1793), Pitt told the House of Commons: “They [i.e., the French] will not accept, under the name of liberty, any model of government but that which is conformable to their own opinions and ideas… They have stated that they would organise every country by a disorganising principle…” As quoted in Bryant, Years of Endurance, p. 105.
Northedge, op. cit., pp. 385–386.
George, op. cit., p. 44.
Parliamentary History of England, XXXVI, p. 750, May 13, 1802.
The Windham Papers, with an introduction by the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Roseberry (Boston, 1913), II, p. 143, William Windham to William Pitt, November 18, 1799.
See Pitt’s letter of December 1, 1799, with Enclosure, to Sir Charles Stuart, in Wortley, op. cit., pp. 322–323.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 201, December 6, 1931.
The Diplomats, 1919–1939, ed. by Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert (New York, Atheneum paperback, 1963), II, pp. 445–447; Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott, The Appeasers (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 12–13.
Nicholson, Diaries and Letters, I, p. 269, July 16, 1936.
F. O’Gorman, The Whig Party and the French Revolution (New York, 1967), passim.
W. H. Richardson, Economic Recovery in Britain, 1932–1939 (London, 1967), p. 22. The largest number of unemployed existed in 1933, when 2,845,000 were out of work.
See e.g. S. Maccoby, English Radicalism, 1786–1832, passim, and E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, passim.
For Baldwin, see Northedge, op. cit., p. 385; for Chamberlain, Feiling, op. cit., p. 157.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 314; Watt, Personalities and Policies, pp. 100–116. A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second WarId War, Fawcett paperback (New York, 1961), pp. 116–117.
The treaty of Lunéville between France and Austria had provided for the independence of these states. Although England had not signed the treaty, she thought she could rely on its provisions. When Bonaparte violated its clauses, and England protested, he refused to recognize her protests since she was not a party to the agreement.
Ziegler, Addington … First Viscount Sidmouth, pp. 421–422.
According to Pitt, Addington was “a man of little mind, of consummate vanity and of very slender abilities.” Rose, William Pitt and the Great War, p. 477. “There are some who think I [Chamberlain] am over-cautious, — timid, Amery calls it — humdrum, commonplace, and unenterprising. But I know that charge is groundless…,” Feiling, op. cit., p. 235.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 396, February, 1939.
For Coleridge’s views, see Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Essays on his own times (London, 1850), I, pp. 33, 153–154, 214; II, pp. 468–469, 583. Mrs. Henry Sandford Thomas Poole and his friends (London, 1888), I, pp. 221–222; II, p. 74. David V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet against Empire (Princeton, 1954), passim.
Watt, “Influence from Without: German Influence on British Opinion, 1933–1938…,” in Personalities and Policies, pp. 117–135.
Gilbert and Gott, The Appeasers, p. 51. See also George A. Lanyi, “The Problem of Appeasement,” World Politics, XV (January, 1963), p. 319.
H. Beeley, “A Project of Alliance with Russia in 1802,” The English Historical Review, XLIX (1934), pp. 497–502.
Authentic Official Documents relative to the Negotiation with France … as laid before both Houses of Parliament (London, 1803), pp. 143–144, No. 68, Lord Hawkesbury to Lord Whit-worth, May 7, 1803. The hidden appeasement of Chamberlain after March 15 is covered in detail by Gilbert and Gott, The Appeasers, pp. 233–298.
Authentic Official Documents, pp. 70–74, No. 38, Lord Whitworth to Lord Hawkesbury, February 21, 1803.
As quoted in Alan Bullock, Hitler. A Study in Tyranny, revised edition (New York, Bantam paperback, 1961), p. 482.
Ibid., p. 491.
Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, March 20, 1802, p. 265.
The Parliamentary History of England, Vol. 36 (London, 1820), p. 75. The Earl of Stanhope, in his biography of Pitt, asserts that Fox and his followers were regarded as so pro-French “that they gave some handle to the popular reproach of that time applied to them, as clamorous for ‘peace upon any terms’,” Earl Stanhope, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (London, 1862), III, p. 214.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 381; Parliamentary History, 36, pp. 12, 17. Pitt, in debate on the Address of Thanks to the King’s Speech, had called the preliminaries “glorious and honourable.” Lord Hawkesbury used the same expressions. Ibid., 36, pp. 39, 41, 45. Addington, in a speech on the definitive treaty, stated “that he had not tarnished the honour of the country by the measures he had adopted…” Ibid., 36, p. 812.
William Cobbett, A collection of facts and observations relative to the peace with Bonaparte, etc. (London, 1801), p. 66; The Life and Letters of William Cobbett in England and America (London, 1913), I, pp. 131–132.
[William Cobbett], “To the Rt. Hon. Lord Hawkesbury,” Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, April 17, 1802, p. 404. It is ironic that more than a century later an historian believed that the Addington cabinet resumed the war with France in 1803, because “the ministry was principally interested in its own preservation.” See Harold C. Deutsch, The Genesis of Napoleonic Imperialism (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), p. 141.
Stanley Baldwin, speaking in the House of Commons on November 12, 1936, and quoted in Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), p. 216. Churchill could not refrain in his memoirs from commenting that this statement carried frankness “into indecency.” Loc. cit.
Churchill, Gathering Storm, p. 216 For the refutation of the charge see R. Bassett, “Telling the truth to the people: The myth of the Baldwin ‘Confession’,” The Cambridge Journal, II (November 1948), pp. 84–95; J. H. Grainger, Character and Style in English Politics (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 174–177; Robert R. James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939 (New York, 1970), pp. 293–297.
Feiling, op. cit., p. 396, February, 1939.
British Museum, Manuscript Room, “Liverpool Papers,” Add. mss 38238, vol. 49, Lord Whitworth to Lord Hawkesbury, March 24, 1803. Also, Carl L. Lokke, “Secret Negotiations to Maintain the Peace of Amiens,” American Historical Review, XLIX (October 1943–July 1944), pp. 55–64; Gilbert and Gott, The Appeasers, p. 224.
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Presseisen, E.L. (1978). On Motives and Similarities. In: Amiens and Munich. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9718-9_3
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