ABSTRACT
The interpretation of international politics adopted by Alexander II in the years after the Crimean War served him admirably for twenty years. In the first half of 1863 the Russian government faced a major insurrection by the Poles, and by May of that year it appeared to Alexander II that the Poles might be backed by Napoleon III to the point of war, with the diplomatic support, at least, of the British and the Austrians. By the 1860s Russia’s position in central Asia had, as Sir John Malcolm had predicted, become much like that of the British in India in the early nineteenth century. The assertion of Russian predominance by war and diplomacy in states adjoining his empire from the Balkans to the Amur was an essential theme of Alexander II’s foreign policy, and down until 1877 he had calculated the risks and taken his chances with striking success.
