ABSTRACT
Germany’s new ambitions induced feelings of insecurity in Britain as she faced challenges from France in Africa, the United States in South America, and Russia in
the Far East. Salisbury’s colleagues questioned a semi-detached position in Europe and the world: and looked to full partnership with another great power, Germany or-as Chamberlain suggested at times-the United States. Salisbury sanctioned Chamberlain’s conversations with the Germans from 1898, and himself glanced back to the Anglo-Russian alliance against the first Napoleon. With Continental Europe dominated by two armed camps and America the possessor of a navy that enabled her to seize the Spanish American colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the cabinet no longer deferred to Salisbury as they had done when great issues of foreign policy came up. They could not forget the miscarriage in 1895-6 of his designs on Turkey, which he wrongly thought were close to being realized. It was the worst setback of his time at the Foreign Office; ending the hope of a final, comprehensive partition to make “satisfied powers” of all those who had expectations from the dying Ottoman empire. Unwilling, as ever, to let his country be committed to fighting with, and for, a Continental power, he improved on the Gladstonian ideal he had once derided as quite unrealistic and spoke of an “inchoate federation of Europe”.3
