which brought the Spanish Armada to our shores, she must answer that it was the conviction which the Spaniards formed that they could not deal with the rebellion in the Low Countries without dealing at the same time with the English question.'[1] The same qualities of the author are shown not less clearly and fruitfully in his analysis of the place of the English Revolution in relation to international affairs and the liberties of Europe,[2] in his estimate of the work of William III, 'the pius Aeneas, who bears the weight of destiny,'[3] and in his comparison and linking of the policy of Elizabeth, of Cromwell, and of William.[4] 'What began about 1567 with the commencement of the Dutch rebellion is in a sense completed at the Treaty of Utrecht. For us the result is that our state begins to assume the character of a great Trade Empire. … The second Revolution, which seemed to take its rise in religion, ends in commerce; it results, if we regard it comprehensively, in establishing a greater commercial state than the world had yet seen.'[5]
(b) Egerton, British Foreign Policy in Europe to the End of the 19th century.[6]
There is no work that gives a continuous account of British diplomacy and foreign policy on a scale commensurate with the importance of the subject; and it is a task that cannot be discharged adequately by the labour, knowledge, and good judgement of one man only. In the absence of such a work, this book will be found of use as a general introduction to the study of the subject.[7] It is more especially concerned with
- ↑ The Growth of British Policy, i, p. 153.
- ↑ ii, pp. 274–348.
- ↑ ii, p. 325.
- ↑ e.g. ii, pp. 322–5.
- ↑ ii, pp. 338, 339. Cf. pp. 343, 347, on the Second Hundred Years' War, and the concluding chapter on 'The Commercial State'.
- ↑ 1917, pp. viii + 440.
- ↑ ch. i, Introductory. ii, Religion, Trade and Foreign Greed; their Influence upon English Foreign Policy, 1570-1688. iii, The Resistance to French World-Supremacy; Anglo-French Rapprochements, 1689–1789.
