ABSTRACT
From the 1870s to his final departure from the Foreign Office in 1900, Salisbury hardly deviated from his carefully thought out approach to the problem of Britain’s future in a changing world. She was part of Europe, but with a difference. A semidetached policy was both right and possible for her. She must work with the European powers, as the British public expected, but she ought not to sacrifice too much of her freedom of action to their treaty-based alliances. So long as she preserved her essential freedom Salisbury was ready and willing to align Britain with a power, or powers, whose interests coincided with hers in the long or the short run. Bismarck and his methods never appealed to him, nor did he entertain any illusions about the difficulties inherent in negotiating with Russian autocracy. Yet the power he most distrusted was France, not because the Third Republic was a functioning democracy, but because of her deep-seated anglophobia and the volatility of her politicians and people. Moreover, the magnitude of her defeat by Germany in 1870 appeared to preclude a revival of the Anglo-French entente round which Palmerston had built his policy. Militarily weak and disinclined to expend blood and treasure in a trial of strength on Continental battlefields, Britain needed to be on good terms with France’s successor as the strongest power on land if she was to count for something in Europe. The Eastern question taught Salisbury to look to Bismarck and Germany for solutions that Britain could not impose. This formative experience did not make a cynic of him in international politics. While he had little patience with the idealism that Gladstone seemed to make his own, and sometimes indulged, Salisbury adopted a humane and prudent pragmatism. It called for skill with limited resources and a lot of nerve; qualities apparent beyond Europe, too, in his handling of the Anglo-American relationship, perhaps the trickiest for any Victorian minister.
