They called it ‘Splendid Isolation’. Britain’s policy in the latter half of the nineteenth century was to avoid alliances and entanglements with other nations, continental European powers in particular. This coincided with the era of British industrial, economic, financial and military world pre-eminence – the golden era of the British Empire.
I possess a school atlas which dates from shortly before the First World War. Not only does it show the extensive British Empire, it shows a German Empire stretching from East Prussia to Alsace-Lorraine, the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire with Eastern Europe carved-up between them. I have pondered that whoever first bought that atlas probably had no inkling as to the turmoil that would soon throw the continent of Europe, which had been mostly peaceful since the Congress of Vienna, into such turmoil and change.
Of course, Britain always maintained a certain level of involvement in world politics to protect her interests and our dominance couldn’t last. Countries like the US and Germany were catching up economically and Britain saw Germany in particular as a threat. In 1902 we finally conceded that we could not maintain the naval two-power standard and signed a treaty with Japan against Russia in the Far East.
1904 saw the symbolic abandonment of isolationism from continental politics and arguably a disastrous change in British foreign policy direction with the signature of the Entente Cordiale with France – the first act in a century of involvement in continental European politics which dragged Britain from being the greatest power in the world – the land of Magna Carta and the Mother of parliaments, which had forged its own course highly successfully since the Reformation – to a subject territory of an undemocratic bureaucratic centralist European superstate.
When I was studying A-level history, a frequent exam question was “What were the causes of the First World War?” or a variation thereof. One was expected to answer by setting out the various different explanations given by different historians as to what the war was about – incredible that no one seems sure considering the scale of the resulting death and suffering.
There had been several episodes in the tit-for-tat rivalry between France and Germany: Napoleon had invaded and brought down the Holy Roman Empire – the Germans felt humiliated. Bismarck had annexed Alsace-Lorraine in Franco-Prussian War – the French felt humiliated. If there was another skirmish between the two, it really wasn’t Britain’s business and it would probably be over in a few months. Tragically that’s not how history played-out.
The British Foreign Office had this thing about the ‘Balance of Power in Europe’. We wanted to stop Germany from becoming the dominant power in continental Europe. We signed-up to a system of alliances which meant that the assassination of the Austrian crown prince by a Serbian led to all the great powers of Europe stumbling into war like a bunch of dominoes. It led to the deaths of almost a million young British men and those of several million more soldiers of other European nations – a tragedy of incomprehensible scale.
We got our US cousins involved to overcome the trench war stalemate. So began the eclipse of Britain as the world’s greatest power and the emergence of the one which would dominate the world until the present day.
The granting of universal suffrage and the reduction in the gap between rich and poor which followed the war was a good thing, but Britain was noticeably less confident and more modest. Then of course came the Great Depression.
World War Two is almost universally regarded as a justified war to stop the evil of Hitler. It is unlikely however that the fanatical Nazis would ever have come to power in an advanced society like Germany had it not been for the punitive terms imposed by the Allies at Versailles, followed by the impoverishment of middle-class in the hyper-inflation caused by the Weimar governments’ printing of money to pay the extortionate war reparations.
Everyone has seen the harrowing films of the liberation of the concentration camps. However we need to remind ourselves that Britain and France did not declare war on Germany to save the Jews and other minorities. Most people, not unreasonably, did not want another war like the First World War. Chamberlain and the French sold out the Czechs at the Munich conference without even inviting them. (We may have forgotten, but the Czechs haven’t.) It was only when Hitler went back on his word and invaded Poland that Britain declared war. Again, it was about the ‘Balance of Power’.
During England’s darkest hour, Churchill mortgaged our future to the US to persuade them to bail us out. The Americans drove a hard bargain (for more detail I refer you to Robert Stevenson’s excellent article on this site 20th November.) Britain emerged from World War Two nominally having won, but exhausted and diminished – literally reduced to rubble with her people living in austerity and rationing. We were allowed to pretend we were still a great power, with seats on international bodies and the A-bomb, but we were forced to relinquish our empire and the Suez Crisis demonstrated we could not act without America’s say-so.
Even during the consumer and cultural boom of the 1960s, British industry was outdated, propped up by the government and dogged by strikes. Economically we incurred persistent balance of payments deficits and were forced to devalue sterling. By the 1970s, with oil shocks, the 3-day week, leftist radicalism and decadent youth culture, many Brits saw their country going down the pan.
The political establishment was desperate for Britain to join the EU club as a new stage to play on now we had lost the empire. As with NATO, the Americans saw the purpose of the EU as to “keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down” and wanted to see the UK in as a counterbalance. De Gaulle inadvertently did us a favour with his “non” initially, but Heath was determined to sell us out. As part of the backroom deal to join the EU, Britain allowed lucrative business contracts to go to the French. As well as wads of cash, we handed over our fishing waters, we subsidised French farmers through the CAP, funded moving our industries offshore, burdened our businesses with a huge amount of over-regulation and enacted OJEU public procurement directives under which it is illegal to give preference to UK bidders – though strangely only we seem to play by the rules.
Germany is now the dominant power in continental Europe – so over a century of British foreign policy in Europe has failed – and in the process we have diminished ourselves and lost our commanding role in world trade. Still our establishment is determined to keep us in the EU and involved in foreign wars, using phrases like having “a place at top table” or “punching above our weight”.
Now the Brexit vote has happened and the British people have signaled they want a change. The UK is a group of small but industrious islands. There is no reason why we can’t prosper like an economically larger version Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, or even the likes of Singapore – minding our own business, looking after our own people, trading and getting rich.
I now look at that atlas again. Do people now realise the huge changes we are likely to be on the eve of? I know vested interests don’t give up easily though. Let’s hope this doesn’t take another war.
My secondary school (1970-77) had maps of the Empire but I remember these being “removed” as the focus started to shift after 1975.
I think it is often overlooked that the WWI leaders and those who led Europe to WW1 were basically reforming socialist/liberals and Social Darwinists.
Austria-Hungary
Emperor Franz Joseph I, reformer
Franz Ferdinand, killed by revolutionary socialist nationalists causing the road to War to begin
Germany Kaiser Wilhelm II
Reforming militaristic Social Darwinist and early national socialist*
Ottoman Empire Sultan Mehmed V
Prussian-styled miltaristic jihadist
BritainKing George V, pliant ruler allowed Lloyd George (liberal) to reform the House of Lords making it powerless to affect govermment decisions.
Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, a Liberal social reformer, took Britain to war (Britain had remained neutral until 1914 and is it not arguable the Lords night have prevented our entry to war had they not been stripped of power by the later Hitler-admiring Lloyd George?)
Bulgaria Tsar Ferdinand I, militaristic nationalist reformer
France President Raymond Poincare Middle ground liberal
Prime Minister Rene Viviani democratic socialist
Russia Tsar Nicholas II
resisted reforms, was murdered by international socialists who took Russia into war.
Serbia Crown Prince Alexander
reforming centrist aristocrat, killed by a socialist revolutionary
United States of America
President Woodrow Wilson Democrat left-leaning socialist
Japan
Emperor Taisho Liberal reformer
German Kaiser Wilhelm II said as it became clear that Germany planned to invade France:
“With heavy heart I have been compelled to mobilise my army against a neighbour at whose side it has fought on many a battlefield. With genuine sorrow do I witness the end of a friendship, which Germany loyally cherished. We draw the sword with a clean conscience and clean hands.” German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg declared to the Reichstag that Germany was breaking international law.
The French were blamed.
“3rd-way” politics as coined by Blair had also been envisaged by Mussolini as an antidote to the “failure of socialism and the excesses of capitalism”, working alongside corporate fascism (globalism) to merge private a state interests. It is a legacy that began in the revolutions and anarchist movements of the C19th and which we have still not resolved; the EU and UN are attempts to install an international globalist government which however shares the same propensity to arrogance, deliberate social engineering and destabilisation, elitism – often dressed as “egalitarianism” – and war, as we witness in the last century.
Capitalism is blamed by our schools for WW1 but mirrors openness and freedom and advocates responsibility and integrity; but If anything has failed it is clearly socialism. As we have seen, it only takes one generation to forget this.
The establishment love Europe, they like visiting, buying holiday homes and so on. EU membership is very convenient for them and prancing on the “world” stage makes them feel like important people when they are on the continent. Our own politicians should be concentrating on the people at home who they represent. Co-operation in trade and security etc. are fine but there it should stop.
Part of the problem of Brexit is that no one in government believed for a single moment that they would lose the referendum but also deliberately made no plan B, in case it helped the Leave campaign. In addition, I doubt there are many public servants left who have not been utterly indoctrinated with the belief that EU membership is essential to our survival, hence the loss of EU diplomatic staff.
I’m convinced that all this talk of years to negotiate Brexit is simply a way of salvaging the closest possible ties to the EU that they can manage to retain and that May is part of this movement, which must be disguised in order not to lose votes. The writing on the wall is clear enough for those that bother to look, we must never cease to point it out to the public.
WWI destroyed four empires (Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, Russian) and mortally wounded a fifth (WWII was necessary to kill off the British Empire). Who benefited? Those who planned it all in the first place, of course.
The major powers may have stumbled into WWI without fully appreciating its significance or likely outcome but if you think that WWI was just an unplanned “accident”, you haven’t been reading the right material!
Please let me know what the right material is. It sounds like it might make interesting reading.
Great article!
It always struck me on my travels around the world, how I never felt far from home. There are examples of British architecture and infrastructure everywhere.
Many years ago, while in India, I hired a motorcycle from a young Indian woman. She wanted to be paid in pounds and I asked her why? Because she was saving up to go to England, she replied. It is the same all over the world, people dream of coming to England, not France, not Germany, they’re always a plan B. I know we can’t allow everybody to come here, but I think it’s amazing how symbolically powerful Britain still is. People around the world will be remembering our Queen long after jumped up bureaucrats like Merkel and Junker are long forgotten.
Although the memory of the British Empire is sometimes emotive, countries under British rule fared much better than those under the Spanish and Portuguese. As an immigrant friend said to me: “I wanted to come to come here, because everywhere that the British have been, works and is a good place to live.” Mostly we left working countries behind us.
Believe me the world will trade with us. Britain leaving the EU will throw the whole world in a new strategic direction and I think this is what terrifies the EU, they will fade away.
In you dreams Merkel and Junker, the ghost of an empire is coming back to haunt you.
The irony is many foreigners admire British history and our way of doing things than our own ruling elite does.
Farage in his “GO ” campaign speeches used to say
“They don`t think we are good enough”
He was right the elite have run us down for years, in fact they have been our enemy within and Cameron and his cronies was the final epitome of the problem.
The only exception has been Maggie and even she blotted her copy book by signing the single EU act.
1913 largest economies in the world were 1) USA 2) Germany 3) UK 4) Russia 5) France.
China, Turkey, Persia,and even Japan were backward with a part medieval peasantry. Argentina, Canada, Austria Hungary, and Italy were rapidly modernising. Ukraine was the most productive land in Europe.
1939 Adolf upset the cart as his bluff was called. His aim was the annihilation of the USSR and the unification of all volksdeutscher be they in Poland, Lithuania, and Yugoslavia etc. The whole of the middle volga area around Saratov to Volgagrad/Tsaritsyn (sic) had a near German majority for example.There were many more ethnic Germans in Europe then than they are now.
A straight war between the USSR and Germany would have been won by the latter and saved lives including most jews who died in the 2ndWW.Germany was able to have an alliance of Humgary, Slovakia, Romania, Spain (in part), Finland, Sweden ( in part) and Croatia.Not to mention Italy.
The United Kingdom went to war for the freedom of Poland and then the Labour Govnt of 1945 handed it over lock stock and people to Stalin to suffer mass murder and iron rule that continued to 1989.Poland was barred from the London victory parade by Attlee so as not to upset Stalin.
I am glad that Poland is free now and it has an energetic people.
I yearn for the Fatherland to be free of marxism and guilt and once again becomes a true nation and cultural treasure of the continent.
Interesting. I didn’t know about the ethnic Germans in the middle Volga. I wonder whether they’re still there or were deported/exterminated by the Soviets.
The Volga Germans endured the same fate as the Chechens. Enslaved and deported en masse for hard labour to remote parts of Kazakhstan where the majority died/were killed. The Chechens commemorate this every 23rd Feb – “Vyna” (the slaughter).
Unlike the Chechens who in 1959 were allowed to return to their Caucasian homeland the remnants of the Volga Germans were eventually freed by Gorbachov and the West German/nascent unified German government in 1990 paid for their return to the homeland and were settled across the BundesRepublik eg quite a few in Mainz. A fictionalised version of this story can be seen as part of the epic TV drama Heimat3 by Edgar Reitz. the volga Germans settled as part of the east colonisation in the 17thC and thus used to speak very arcane German.
Determination to stay in the EU is only a symptom of something far worse. The rulers have no interest in Britain as a nation at all any more. It’s just another economic area now while they prance on a world stage as ‘world leaders’. They will not be admitting this any time soon!
This is another angle on the same thing. The elite become increasingly distanced from the mass of people living in a bubble of bottomless greed for power and money.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2536394/society-could-collapse-within-a-decade-mathematical-historian-predicts/
Mike, it’s interesting, and refreshing, that this guy pours cold water on the hysterical claims that Trump is one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But then he says “We’re all doomed” and I couldn’t help thinking of the gloomy Scot in ‘Dad’s Army’.
There’s a bit of hope, I suppose, in his saying that we can forestall disaster by changing course, but if that change relies on the rich elite giving up their pursuit of power and money, only a revolution will suffice to prise their dead, cold hands from all they possess and aspire to.
Dear Comrade K,
You say “during … 1960s, British industry was outdated, “. I can confirm that.
I worked in British industry from 1960 to 1977, visiting many factories. Walls were grey. Floors were grey. Machines were worn out.
Only abroad did I ever see what a factory should look like …. all shiny and new and colourful.
Regards, Toby.
Though I could turn it round and say at least Britain had some industry in the ’60s & ’70s…
Blimey, All shiny new and colourful ? It didn’t work then ?
I know that there are various interpretations of history, but I find Comrade K’s version persuasive. It’s the phrase ‘Splendid Isolation’ that does it for me, reminding me of the first month of a degree course in Humanities I began in 1978. The induction was at a remote mansion in Northumberland, miles from anywhere (probably to deter escapes) and all the students were divided into ‘national’ teams to play a war game based on the run-up to the First World War.
There was much dashing from room to room with messages of support, retractions of support, declarations of war etc. Throughout all this, a great deal of mockery was made of Britain’s policy of splendid isolation, depicting it as an illusion that was untenable both in theory and practice. I didn’t understand the rather anti-British stance until, as the course progressed, I discovered that an astonishing number of lecturers were self-proclaimed Marxists. Par for the course in those days.
Over the last half century, I’ve often wondered why the UK didn’t have the sense to persist in its policy of Splendid Isolation and keep out of WWI. We could have been spared much suffering, bloodshed, death and financial ruin. There might never have been another war or an EU to escape from. It’s hard to imagine how different Britain, Europe and the world would be today if we had simply minded our own business and vigorously guarded our coasts.
All I can be pretty sure of is that my 17 year old uncle would not have gone down with the Royal Oak in 1939, and my Dad would not have died at 38 years old.
Sorry to hear about your father and uncle. My family is lucky to have escaped bereavement in both wars, but I’m sure it’s one of the few. After paying such a high price as a nation, it’s so much harder to entertain the idea the idea it may not have been necessary.
“It’s hard to imagine how different Britain, Europe and the world would be today if we had simply minded our own business and vigorously guarded our coasts.”
We might yet see the Britain that could have been all those years ago but it will be a hard fight. We must not give up or lose our faith in winning it.
Yes but very likely a motive of revenge on the Allies too. If we’d destroyed the German army in 1918 we might have saved Europe from WW2.
Brexit comes into it because Comrade’s central thesis, that European entanglement eventually embroiled us in its wars,is entirely valid. An EU army signals a modern equivalent, and even NATO has been acting questionably. And didn’t Bremoaners keep going on about how our going would increase the chance of war in Europe? – a perverse reversal of the argument, but on topic nevertheless.
Brilliant article, Comrade – should be proscribed reading at the FCO.
Our failure and all that loss of British life reflects the hauteur and consistent misjudgments of the British establishment, who have also managed to ensure we will soon be a minority in our own country. Those whom the gods would destroy …
Prescribed, not proscribed!
Ha! I’m sure anything like this is proscribed in order to maintain their narrative.
Not that it matters but the reparations paid by Germany were not destructive and did not led to WW2. This is a popular myth unsupported by modern historians. The real reason for Germany embarking on WW2 was to finish the war they were winning in the East but which was halted by the Armistice. Rearmament started almost immediately after 1919 with factories in neutral countries, notably Sweden, and weapons proving taking place in Russia. Germany had expected to be paid reparations rather than paying them. The German propaganda machine went into overdrive to tell Germans of betrayal and various other causes of their failure to win and spread the myth of vindictive reparations. The truth is that Germany actually paid very little – far less than Germany would have claimed and did claim against Russia – and that reparations were carefully calculated on the actual costs of the war to the Allies and then drastically cut. There was no element of punishment. Hitler made clear to his Military High Command his intention to re-start the Ware in the East as soon as he became Chancellor. While I’m on the subject, appeasement by Britain was because few people in Britain wanted another war and various peace and socialist movements were vigorously campaigning against war. It was not all Chamberlain’s fault. It was the mood of the country.
Anyway, hardly related to Brexit.
Some interesting points. I’m open to revisionism, though would like to know your sources.
Of course, Hitler was quite open as to his intentions, before & after getting into power, which was a change in declared policy compared to the Weimar governments.
I see this as related to Brexit as it’s about the British ruling class getting involved in continental European affairs rather than keeping our nose clean and sticking to being a global trading nation.