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RR 2013/288 Historical Dictionary of British Foreign Policy Peter Neville Scarecrow Press Lanham, MD and Plymouth 2013 xxxi + 357 pp. ISBN 978 0 8108 7173 1 (print); ISBN 978 0 8108 7371 1 (e-book) £65 $105 Historical Dictionaries of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations
Keywords Dictionaries, Foreign relations, History, United Kingdom
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-08-2013-0202
This is the fourteenth contribution to Scarecrow's Historical Dictionaries of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations series begun in 2006 and only the second volume to cover the foreign policy of a specific country. To date the series has focussed on aspects of American foreign policy, especially bilateral relations with other states or regions. China is the only other country to have been given individual treatment (Sutter, 2011) (RR 2012/060), but it is important to note that Britain's relationship with the US was covered in the tenth volume of the series Historical Dictionary of Anglo-American Relations (Ellis, 2009) (RR 2009/359). Author Peter Neville is a British academic, currently a research associate at the University of Westminster. He has published widely on British and European history, especially on the British policy of appeasement in the run-up to the Second World War.
In format this volume follows the standard Scarecrow Press historical dictionary pattern of a series Editor's Foreword, an Acronym and Abbreviations listing, a Chronology, an Introduction, the main Dictionary sequence, appendices and a Bibliography. As is generally the case, there is no index and we are fortunately spared the grainy illustrations and poor quality maps which frequently diminish other Scarecrow historical dictionaries. The chronological coverage of British foreign policy stretches back, not as one might expect to the Acts of Union between England and Scotland finalised in 1707, but to the establishment of the Foreign office in 1782. However, while there is coverage of nineteenth century British diplomacy, the focus is very much on the twentieth century with the period since the end of the Second World War...