This book has two main objectives. The first is to consider why European events had such an impact on nineteenth-century British Liberal policy and politics. The core of the book is the five chapters in Part II, which explore the domestic effect of particular continental episodes. chapter 4 considers the 1848 revolutions and their consequences to 1854. chapter 5 discusses the impact through the 1860s of the unification of Italy, and chapter 6 the crisis of 1870–1, including the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune and the Vatican Council. chapter 7 examines the Eastern question as it developed from the Bulgarian agitation of 1876 through to the occupation of Egypt in 1882, and its ramifications for African and imperial policy in the 1880s. Part II also contains an introductory chapter on the period 1830–47. This focuses on four approaches taken at that time by influential Liberals – Russell, Palmerston, Cobden and the leaders of radical evangelical Dissent – to the question of how to struggle against the powerful forces of European illiberalism. Each of these had lasting effects on the party.

These chapters cover those European events that had the most important political ramifications at home (with one exception). They trace the interrelationships between these discussions and the development of ideas of Englishness in Liberal argument. Therefore, the book is also a contribution to the now substantial literature on national identity in the nineteenth century.