Abstract
In 1909 Edward made his final foreign visit, which also happened to be his first full state visit to Germany, and received his last from a senior European royal, in the person of the Tsar. The visit to Germany took place in February, between his own 1908 visit to Russia and the Tsar’s return state visit to Britain in August 1909, which will also be discussed in this chapter. The background to both is the failing health of the King and, in spite of this, his continuing commitment to royal diplomacy. This requires a reassessment of the state visit to Germany, often wrongly described as a ‘failure’ because in later assessments of it the emphasis has been placed on his poor health, rather than on what he achieved during that visit.1
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References
Roy Jenkins (1964) Asquith (London: Collins), p. 185.
The Times regularly referred to this ‘obsession in the imperial mind’; see, for instance, ‘The German Emperor and Strategical Problems’, The Times, 6 January 1909. It was an issue to which he returned after Germany’s defeat and his abdication; see Wilhelm II and Thomas Ybarra (1922) The Kaiser’s Memoirs: Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, 1888–1918 (London: Harper and Brothers).
H. Gooch and G.P. Temperley (1927) British Documents on the Origins of the War, 10 vols (London: HMSO) Vol. 6, no. 106, p. 168.
Gordon Brook-Shepherd (1975) Uncle of Europe (London: Collins), pp. 258–61.
Matthew S. Seligmann and Roderick McLean (2000) Germany from Reich to Republic 1871–1918 (London: Macmillan), p. 102.
Alternatives to the narrative on the Daily Telegraph interview from Seligmann and McLean can be found in Christopher Clark (2000) Kaiser Wilhelm II (Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited), pp. 172–7;
Catrine Clay (2006) King, Kaiser, Tsar, Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War (London: John Murray), pp. 276–9.
Isaac Don Levine (1920) The Kaiser’s Letters to the Tsar (London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited), p. 221.
H. Gooch and G.P. Temperley (1927) British Documents on the Origins of the War, 10 vols (London: HMSO). Vol. 6, no. 143, p. 227.
Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (1947) Old Diplomacy (London: Butler and Tanner), p. 173.
Sir Frederick Ponsonby (1951) Recollections of Three Reigns (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode), p. 256.
Daisy of Pless (1950) Private Dairies of Daisy of Pless (London: John Murray), p. 211.
Keith Nielson (1995) Britain and the Last Tsar, British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 308.
It is, for instance, the cover image for Ann Morrow (2006) Cousins Divided. George V and Nicholas II (Stroud: Sutton Publishing).
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© 2015 Matthew Glencross
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Glencross, M. (2015). ‘The Most Powerful and Influential Diplomat of His Day’: Edward VII’s Final State Visits. In: The State Visits of Edward VII. Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137548993_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137548993_9
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