Great Britain and the Schleswig-Holstein Question 1848-64: A Study in Diplomacy, Politics, and Public Opinion

Book excerpt: This book closes an obvious gap in nineteenth-century historiography by carefully analysing British policy and public opinion with regard to the Schleswig-Holstein problem from 1848 to 1864. Solidly based on a study of private and public correspondence, memoirs, biographies, newspapers, periodicals, sessional papers, foreign office documents, and parliamentary debates, it argues that the failure of British policy was due to division and uncertainty of opinion. Britain vacillated between a pliant and a defiant course and eventually chose to worst features of both. Professor Sandiford demonstrates that the failure of Russell's Schleswig-Holstein diplomacy in 1864 was largely the result of a long sequence of British miscalculations dating back at least to 1848. He also shows that the general bewilderment, both within and outside the British Parliament, permitted the queen and a handful of her ministers to exert more influence on Britain's policy in 1863-4 than has previously been supposed.