ABSTRACT
By the middle of the 1890s Britain’s position in the world was far from comfortable. During the 1890s and 1900s Britain’s foreign economic interests grew enormously. Despite the pressures on it therefore from the outside and from within, and whatever the force of the argument that it was sapping Britain’s capacity to survive, liberalism remained entrenched, which meant that the priorities of foreign policy which in the past had been associated with liberalism were entrenched too. The main circumstance was the ambiguity of Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe, which arose directly out of the discrepancies that still existed between her material interests and the material interests of all the continental countries before 1914. The colonies had to be protected because they protected a more fundamental and vital British interest: which was her freedom and ability to trade and invest in the world.
