ABSTRACT
The role of the Foreign Office (FO) in military matters of imperial defence has long been a grey and neglected area. The fact that ‘imperial’ can be interpreted in a number of ways with regard to the use of military forces is part of the explanation. It also reflects the fact that in the early twentieth century, imperial defence worked on the assumption that Britain would have the resources to enable her empire to be defended. This was particularly so when the Royal Navy (RN) was still a global force of major significance even when no longer at a level superior to its two nearest challengers. With the approach of the Second World War, the policy assumptions of civilian planners could no longer depend on being able to provide what the empire in its various far-flung components might actually need for defence. Hard choices therefore loomed large but nowhere larger than in the interwar debates on the appeasement of Japan and Germany.
