ABSTRACT
The historical narrative and its analysis here are held together by the organizing thesis that modern international relations can be understood within the framework of strategic history. Furthermore, that framework, partial though it is, provides a tolerably reliable guide to the course of international relations globally. However, as grand theory, the strategic historical postulate is minimal almost to a fault. What other ideas might bind this long period of modern history for better comprehension? What other aids to analytical coherence can be identified and exploited? This chapter provides and discusses answers to those questions in the forms of themes and contexts. Six major themes are identified which run through the whole of the text. These vital six are relevant to every period in the two centuries, and to all matters having to do with war and peace. Next, the principal contexts are presented. In total, they constitute the variable conditions within which war and peace occur in international relations. Again, in common with the themes, these contexts are as permanent in their existence and generic significance as they are vastly diverse in content and relative influence. This discussion of themes and contexts leads to formal confrontation with the following question: is there some master plot, some truly grand design, which can be employed to unlock the major mysteries of why and how modern strategic history took the frequently bloody course that it did? But first it is necessary to register an important caveat.
