ABSTRACT
The study of Conservative foreign policy in the period between Benjamin Disraeli's one and only majority government and the outbreak of World War One has suffered a varied fate. It has often been ignored, especially so in the later twentieth century after academic tastes changed in the 1960s and 1970s, and political history was in danger of being swept out to sea by a flood surge of social, cultural and other seemingly novel forms of historical enquiry. The narrow focus on the party's leaders nevertheless is an oversimplification, and so distorts the historical perspective. The extent to which Salisbury was prepared to pursue such a course or to enter into closer relations with other powers was determined by international circumstances. The navy, patriotism and Empire were staple items of Tory platform and parliamentary oratory. In the aftermath of the Great Eastern Crisis, and Disraeli's triumphant vindication in 1878, these earlier speeches appeared to acquire a retrospectively prophetic character.
