Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on the footnotes and bibliography
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 The wider challenges
- 2 Wilson, Lloyd George and the quest for a ‘peace to end all wars’
- 3 The ill-founded peace of 1919
- 4 The escalation of Europe's post-Versailles crisis, 1920–1923
- Part I The Anglo-American stabilisation of Europe, 1923–1924
- Part II Europe's nascent Pax Anglo-Americana, 1924–1925
- Part III The unfinished transatlantic peace order: the system of London and Locarno, 1926–1929
- 17 Sustaining stability, legitimating peaceful change
- 18 Progressive visions and limited commitments
- 19 ‘Reciprocity’?
- 20 The new European concert – and its limits
- 21 Thoiry – the failed quest for a ‘final postwar agreement’
- 22 Towards peaceful change in eastern Europe?
- 23 Achievements and constraints
- 24 No ‘new world order’
- 25 The initiation of the Young process
- 26 The last ‘grand bargain’ after World War I
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Map: Post-World War I Europe after the peace settlement of Versailles
- Bibliography
- Index
19 - ‘Reciprocity’?
Britain as ‘honest broker’ in the Locarno system
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on the footnotes and bibliography
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 The wider challenges
- 2 Wilson, Lloyd George and the quest for a ‘peace to end all wars’
- 3 The ill-founded peace of 1919
- 4 The escalation of Europe's post-Versailles crisis, 1920–1923
- Part I The Anglo-American stabilisation of Europe, 1923–1924
- Part II Europe's nascent Pax Anglo-Americana, 1924–1925
- Part III The unfinished transatlantic peace order: the system of London and Locarno, 1926–1929
- 17 Sustaining stability, legitimating peaceful change
- 18 Progressive visions and limited commitments
- 19 ‘Reciprocity’?
- 20 The new European concert – and its limits
- 21 Thoiry – the failed quest for a ‘final postwar agreement’
- 22 Towards peaceful change in eastern Europe?
- 23 Achievements and constraints
- 24 No ‘new world order’
- 25 The initiation of the Young process
- 26 The last ‘grand bargain’ after World War I
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Map: Post-World War I Europe after the peace settlement of Versailles
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the Commons debate on the treaty on 18 November 1925, Chamberlain called Locarno ‘the beginning, and not the end, of the noble work of appeasement in Europe’. Would his emphatic prediction be borne out not only by his own actions but also the general evolution of international politics in the latter 1920s? Can British policy after Locarno indeed be characterised as an overall successful bid to promote further Franco-German détente and European tranquillity, pursued until overtaken by the Great Depression? Or was it as flawed and futile as the original promotion of the security pact? Did Chamberlain ultimately fail to fulfil his mission as ‘honest broker’, especially in the critical fields of collective security and disarmament?
This analysis seeks to illuminate Britain's post-Locarno policy both from a different angle and through a wider lens. To gauge the extent of what Chamberlain's ‘noble’ policy of appeasement could achieve after Locarno, and what it could not achieve, it is not only imperative to re-assess which aims or strategies he pursued. At least as important is to explore whether, without America's political support, Britain indeed had the power – and, as Chamberlain claimed, the wherewithal – to fulfil his chosen mission: to become the main arbiter propelling Franco-German accommodation and expanding European stability to the east.
As in the American case, the domestic dimension of British foreign policymaking became increasingly important in the latter 1920s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Unfinished Peace after World War IAmerica, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932, pp. 325 - 344Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006