International Relations
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘International Relations’
The Scottish department store near the Bolshoi Theatre inspired an affection that contrasted sharply with Westminster’s Russophobia.
Politics in Victorian Britain suffered badly from hysterical Russophobia, but between the peoples and merchants of the two nations there was a growing warmth. Nowhere was it more obvious than in the affection felt across the Russian Empire towards ‘Muirka’, the Scottish firm of Muir and Mirrielees.
Two British spies look out over war-torn Belgrade, and find the inspiration they need to go on with their dangerous mission.
In John Buchan’s Great War novel ‘Greenmantle’, published in 1916, Richard Hannay and Peter Pienaar are spying for the Allies, making their way under cover through occupied lands to Constantinople. At Belgrade, recently captured by Austria-Hungary, they look on the devastation of war and their hearts go out to the brave people of Serbia.
Herbert Bury distinguished two kinds of overseas investment, and only one was worthy of Englishmen.
Herbert Bury, whose duties as an assistant bishop to the Bishop of London took him all over Europe, came to believe that Britain’s place in the world depended not on bending other countries to our will or draining their resources, but on helping them to grow.
Herbert Bury believed that it was the British way to profit with another country, not to profit from it.
In 1912, the Lena massacre in Russia saw 250 gold miners shot during protests over low wages and harsh conditions in a mine backed by British money. Investors were ashamed when they learnt of the systematic exploitation, and Herbert Bury assured Tsar Nicholas II that decent Englishmen wanted Russia’s people to prosper.
John Bright MP urged a critic of the British Raj to offer India more than fine words.
In 1883, Major Thomas Evans Bell, a former employee of the East India Company and a severe critic of the British Raj, was preparing for a lecturing tour in the United States. John Bright MP (who was not uncritical himself) wrote to remind him that what India needed most from Britain and America was not colonial guilt or blame, but free trade.
As Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon was rather more popular with the people of India than he was with some of his own civil servants.
When Lord Ripon took over as Viceroy of India in 1880, he at once set about including more Indians in Government, and allowing the local press to hold lawmakers to account. Many opposed him and it took a long time for his policy to bear fruit, but Ram Chandra Palit believed that it was Ripon, and not his critics, who was truly British.