ABSTRACT
The myth of Sir Eyre Crowe as the evil spirit of the Foreign Office has long been laid to rest; and various aspects of his career have been examined at great length and in some detail by students of British foreign policy. The figure of Sir Eyre Crowe, as it emerges from scholarly literature, remains as aloof, strange and engaging as before; and it remains so unless an attempt is made to understand Crowe's mind. Every political action, be it in actual deed or in the shape of a policy recommendation, is based on a set of premises, preconceived values and axioms. To elucidate the link between these premises and political action is one of the fundamental problems of the study of the past. This chapter provides true sense of the word; it is an attempt to reconstruct and interpret Eyre Crowe's thought-world. Crowe left behind an abundance of official minutes and memoranda which have not been evaluated systematically.
