The Czechoslovakian crisis in the Spring and Summer of 1938 had deeply divided the British press. By September 1938 there were discernible clear lines ot difference both on the policy Britain was urged te pursue in Central Europe and on the role - or lack of role - envisaged for the U.S.S.R. The Soviet connection to events stemmed from the Czech-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact of May 1935, contingent for its operation in the case of aggression on the active intervention ot France. [...]

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Friendly relations between Britain and France are, historically speaking, an innovation of the twentieth century. Even if we ignore the Hundred Years War and Joan of Arc, the modern history of Anglo-French relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is of a struggle for power which culminated in the Napoleonic Wars, and a bitter colonial rivalry climaxed at Fashoda. The alliance of 1914 failed to reconcile deep diplomatie differences: the French felt the British betrayed them at Versailles and deeply resented Britain's negative attitude towards the French invasion of the Ruhr, and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 which, they felt, facilitated Germany's remilitarization. Britain's appeasement policy at Munich was criticized by some Frenchmen while others blamed the British for forcing France into World War II. Thus it can be seen that Anglo-French friendship was a fragile thing indeed and ill-prepared to withstand the pressures of Arras, Dunkirk, Mers-el-Kebir and Montoire. [...]

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This thesis charts the development of the political and diplomatic relations between England and the Holy Roman, Medieval or German Empire during the reign of Henry III of England, 1216-1272. This will be done before the wider background of contemporary European politics. Therefore, relations between the two realms have been viewed in the context of events and developments such as the papal-imperial conflict, the Mongol invasions, and the crusades. The actions of either Henry III or his Imperial counterpart cannot be understood without this background in mind, and without a comparison to the actions and undertakings of their contemporaries. As a result, it emerges that Henry III's policies towards the Holy Roman Empire did not differ greatly from those of other rulers, such as Louis IX of France or Ferdinand of Castile, and that in his case, as in theirs, the immediate pressing needs of Henry's own kingdom formed and moulded the direction of his relations with the rulers of the Empire. As far as the Emperor was concerned, on the other hand, England was perceived to be a potential source of fiscal and diplomatic support, but was not considered worth any risks. At the same time, the dangers and challenges facing both rulers also forced them over and over again to confront each other's needs and ambitions.

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My dissertation argues that national tropes are continually in a state of flux as they are employed to respond to historical, socio-political and cultural events and trends, and demonstrates that their state at a specific moment encapsulates struggles between various concepts of national identity. I trace shifts in the configuration of Anglo-Scottish relations by undertaking a microanalysis of two specific recurring tropological categories - familial and homosocial tropes — in a number of key moments in cross-border relations between 1707 and 1830. The first chapter, directed at the years surrounding the Union of Parliaments, traces the suppression of cross-border dissonance in homosocial egalitarian tropes which define Anglo-Scottish relations in the work of pro-union pamphleteers, and contrasts this strategy of containment with the disruptive presence of familial tropes in the pamphlets of anti-union writers. The second chapter traces the reappearance of this conflict in the decade following Culloden. Roderick Random, written from the margins by Tobias Smollett, reveals a discomfort with unifying tropes, although it ends with a cursory gesture towards a national marital union. James Ramble, in contrast, written by the English Edward Kimber, deflects dissonance onto Jacobitism, suggesting through tropes of friendship that all aspects of Anglo-Scottish relations are seamlessly integrated into British unity. Chapters three and four foreground the 1760s, a decade in which Scottish agency, in the person of Lord Bute, the Lord Treasurer, seems to reach new heights. Yet it is also a decade of rampant Scotophobia, incited by the Wilkites to undermine Bute's authority. Tropological warfare is an important element of this rhetorical conflict. In chapters five and six, I uncover two competing concepts of Britishness, primarily created by English and Irish writers, which emerge in the 1790s. The first engages with homosocial tropes to foreground Scottish agency in nation-building and empire-building projects, but does so at the expense of a distinct Scottish culture. The second, also produced by English and Irish writers, reifies and celebrates Scottish culture through tropes of cross-border courtship, but tends to represent the emergent concept as endangered, lacking national agency. Chapter six analyzes the Scottish response to this tropological binary.