Getting Our Way: 500 Years of Adventure and Intrigue : the Inside Story of British Diplomacy
- ISBN-10
- 0297858750
- ISBN-13
- 9780297858751
- Category
- Political Science / International Relations / General
- Pages
- 292
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009
- Publisher
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Author
- Sir Christopher Meyer
Description
Over the last five hundred years, Britain's power has waxed and waned: from the puny island nation of the sixteenth century, to the global superpower of the nineteenth century, to the more modest post-imperial status today of a major European power. But in these radically different circumstances, the wisdom of Lord Palmerston's observation has endured.
Getting Our Way recounts nine stories from Britain's diplomatic annals over the last five hundred years, in which the diplomats themselves are at the centre of the narrative. It is an inside account of their extraordinary experiences, sometimes in the face of physical danger, often at history's hinge. Be it Henry Killigrew's mission to Edinburgh in 1572, Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna, Our Man in Washington and the Nassau Deal, or the handover of Hong Kong to China, we can see how Britain has viewed its interests in the world and sought to advance them.
Some of these dramatic episodes record triumph, some failure, but all of them illustrate how the three pillars of the national interest - security, prosperity and values - have been the foundation of British foreign policy for half a century. Each story is illuminated by colourful anecdotes and insights drawn from Christopher Meyer's first-hand experience of international relations.
Moreover, the book is a salutary reminder that foreign policy (what is to be done) and diplomacy (how it is to be done) begin and end with the national interest. And far from being the preserve of aloof aristocrats, the pursuit of our national interest is replete with intrigue, treachery, espionage, and danger - an extraordinary combination of high principle and low cunning, vice and virtue, all with the specific aim of 'getting our way'.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607-1755
By William NesterAnderson , F. W. “ Why Did Colonial New Englanders Make Bad Soldiers ? Contractual Principles and Military Conduct during the ... Andre , Louis , Michel le Tellier et l'Organization de l'Armee Monarchique . Paris : Felix Alcan , 1906 .
-
War and Peace in Sudan: A Tale of Two Countries
By Manṣūr KhālidHolt, F.M., The Mahdist State in the Sudan, Oxford University Press, 1958. Holt, P.M., The Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicle, Brill, London, 1999. Holt, P.M., and Daly M.W., A History of the Sudan, Pearson Education Ltd, ...
-
Organization And Innovation: Guru Schemes and American Dreams
By David Knights, Darren McCabeWhile the KM literature takes licence with Polanyi, it also seems to ignore Nonaka and Takeuchi's rejection ofthe idea that knowledge can be managed as opposed to created (see also Von Krogh et al. 2000).5 Von Krogh et al.
-
Nuclear Proliferation after the Cold War
By Robert Litwak, Mitchell ReissWoodrow Wilson Center Press.
-
Soviet-American Relations After the Cold War
By Robert Jervis, Seweryn BialerRobert S. Litwak and Samuel F. Wells ( Cambridge : Ballinger , 1988 ) , pp . 67-71 , 74 . 14 Walt , Origins of Alliances , pp . 225-27 , and the studies cited there . 15 Ibid . , pp .
-
East Asian Democratization: Impact of Globalization, Culture, and Economy
By Robert W. ComptonFor example , the earliest classical philosophers , beginning with Plato , studied the role of culture in the governing process . While Plato did not have a conception of nationalism , or of a dynamic polity — including mobility and ...
-
American Frontier Activities in Asia: U.S.-Asian Relations in the Twentieth Century
By Young Hum Kim... in the inspired Japanese press in support of extremist policies , the unconciliatory and bellicose public utterances of Japanese leaders , and the tactics of covert or overt threat which had 150 AMERICAN FRONTIER ACTIVITIES IN ASIA.
-
North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival
By Young Whan Kihl, Hong Nack Kim... covert , or semiformal — that were extended to the DPRK by Western governments in the kangsong taeguk period , we might well discover that the ratio of such outside assistance to local commercial earnings began to approach the scale ...
-
Principled Diplomacy: Security and Rights in U.S. Foreign Policy
By Cathal J. Nolan1155-57; and see J. Garry Clifford, "President Truman and Peter the Great's Will," Diplomatic History (Fall 1980): pp. 371-86, especially p. 381n38. 33. Polls cited in Walsh, "What the American People Think of Russia," pp.
-
American Foreign Policy: Since 1900
By Thomas G. Paterson, John Garry Clifford, Kenneth J. HaganThis is the latest edition of a major work on the history of American foreign policy. The volume reflects the revisionism prevalent in the field but offers balanced accounts.