Since 1945, Britain has had to cope with a slow descent from international primacy. The decline in global influence was intended to be offset by the United Kingdom’s entry into Europe in 1975, with the result that national foreign policy came to rest on the two pillars of the Atlantic alliance and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. Yet, with Brexit, one of these pillars is now being removed, leaving Britain facing some serious challenges arising from the prospect of independence. In this incisive book, Christopher Hill explores what lies ahead for British foreign policy in the shadows of Brexit and a more distant and protectionist America under Donald Trump. While there is much talk of a renewed global profile for the UK, Hill cautions that this is going to be difficult to turn into practical reality. Geography, history and limited resources mean that Britain is doomed to seek a continued foreign policy partnership with the Member States of the Union – only now it will be from outside the room looking in. As a result, there is the distinct possibility that both British and European foreign policies will end up worse off as the result of their divorce.

Since 1945, Britain has had to cope with a slow descent from international primacy. The decline in global influence was intended to be offset by the United Kingdom’s entry into Europe in 1975, with the result that national foreign policy came to rest on the two pillars of the Atlantic alliance and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the EU. Yet, with Brexit, one of these pillars is now being removed, leaving Britain facing some serious challenges arising from the prospect of independence. In this incisive book, Christopher Hill explores what lies ahead for British foreign policy in the shadows of Brexit and a more distant and protectionist America under Donald Trump. While there is much talk of a renewed global profile for the UK, Hill cautions that this is going to be difficult to turn into practical reality. Geography, history and limited resources mean that Britain is doomed to seek a continued foreign policy partnership with the Member States of the Union – only now it will be from outside the room looking in. As a result, there is the distinct possibility that both British and European foreign policies will end up worse off as the result of their divorce.

Britain has been a significant voice in global politics in the last two decades and its impact on world events far outweighs its material resources. But how does a small island on the edge of Europe continue to exercise this level of power on an international scale? What kind of actor is Britain internationally? And what future challenges will confront British foreign policymakers in a multi-polar world of emerging powers? In this comprehensive introduction to British foreign policy today Jamie Gaskarth addresses these and other key questions. Against a rich historical backdrop, he examines the main actors and processes involved in British foreign policy-making as well as the role played by identity in shaping such choices. Later chapters focus on the relationship between economics and foreign policy, what it means to be ethical in this policy sphere, and the justification for and benefits of the UK’s continued use of force to achieve its foreign policy goals. Combining interview research, theoretical insight and analysis of contemporary and historical trends, this book charts how British foreign policy has come to be understood and practised in the 21st Century. It will be an invaluable guide for students of British politics, foreign policy, international relations and related courses.

The UK has had one of the longest and most multifaceted relationships with China of any western industrialized nation. Stretching back over two hundred years, this relationship is laden with meaning and is representative of the ways in which a modernizing China has tried to relate to a modernized country. Britain's first sustained attempt to build ties with the Qing imperial court in the eighteenth century was focused primarily on trade. Over the next 150 years, Britain was at the forefront of some of the most infamous instances of Chinese encounters with the outside world, from the Opium Wars, the sacking of the Summer Palace, and the reparations for the Boxer rebellion of 1900 to the maintenance of Hong Kong as a colony. Since the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, policies of engagement have replaced those of confrontation and as China's economy has eclipsed that of the UK, the transformation of that relationship has become imperative for the UK. At a time when China's role in the world is becoming the focus of international business strategy and Brexit is pushing the UK to look to the rest of the world for trade and investment, Kerry Brown assesses the potential for a new "golden age" of UK-China relations and what the UK needs to understand about China before embarking on such a venture.

Prior to World War I, Britain was at the center of global relations, utilizing tactics of diplomacy as it broke through the old alliances of European states. Historians have regularly interpreted these efforts as a reaction to the aggressive foreign policy of the German Empire. However, as Between Empire and Continent demonstrates, British foreign policy was in fact driven by a nexus of intra-British, continental and imperial motivations. Recreating the often heated public sphere of London at the turn of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking study carefully tracks the alliances, conflicts, and political maneuvering from which British foreign and security policy were born.