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Following the German occupation of Denmark on April 9th 1940 Danish representatives were left to their own devices and their positions in their respective host-countries became very much dependent upon the goodwill shown to them by their host-governments and, in the case of the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, the governments and officials of the occupying forces. With their connections with the Government in Copenhagen severed the main task of the Danish representatives was to secure Danish interests in the North Atlantic Territories as well as elsewhere. The fact that Denmark had not put up a fight to defend her neutrality and the subsequent collaboration of the Danish Government with the German occupiers counted against the Danish representatives abroad. However, the Danes were able to exercise a remarkable level of influence on the British and Americans with regard to their policies towards the North Atlantic Area. The extent of influence was mainly due to the entrepreneurship of each individual, the constitutional status of the territory as part of the Kingdom of Denmark, and also due to strategic importance attached by the occupying forces' governments to the occupied territories in question. This latter point became especially apparent in the power struggle amongst the Danish representatives that emerged from the lack of a Danish Government in exile. It became important to the British and the Americans that it was the Danish representative in their country, who emerged as the victor of this power struggle, because that would help to secure their future interests in the North Atlantic territories. The Danish representatives were thus in some cases shown more goodwill and attention than their Norwegian colleagues, although the Norwegians had put up a brave fight against the Germans and had joined the allied side. The North Atlantic area proved very important to the general war policy of the British and Americans during Second World War. British policies were much dependent upon the Americans and Greenland and Iceland became instrumental in the increased involvement of the Americans in the war.

The massive historiography dealing with the problem of Germany's development in the first half of twentieth century has been strongly influenced by the notion that certain peculiar national characteristics led Germany down a Sonderweq, or "special path," which diverged from that of other Western European nations. However, by helping to focus scholarly attention on various political, social and intellectual developments which took place in Germany in the nineteenth century, the Sonderweq thesis has distracted scholars from examining more closely the possible impact which the interplay of international relations had on Germany's development during this pivotal period. The present study examines the extent to which British foreign policy affected the growth of authoritarianism and the decline of liberalism in Prussia during the period 1848-1871, and how certain Intellectual currents in England at the time affected both the formulation and the expression of British policy regarding Prussia. By examining both the policies pursued by British statesmen at certain key points during the period 1848-1871, and the views expressed by a group of highly idealistic British liberal commentators who watched affairs in Prussia closely during this period, I have attempted to demonstrate the following: firstly, that existing interpretations of British policy regarding Prussia have overemphasized the role of liberal idealism in the calculations of British policy-makers, who appear instead to have consistently pursued pragmatic policies aimed at a Prussian-led unification of Germany; and secondly that it was this latter group of British commentators who provided policy-makers with a style of rhetoric which obfuscated the pragmatic considerations underlying British policy. Moreover, it was this same corpus of liberal, "Whig" commentary which laid the conceptual foundations for what was to become the standard interpretative approach to German history, particularly amongst Anglo-American historians writing since 1945 - the Sonderweq thesis. Thus, by separating the rhetoric from the actual practice of British policy, and by identifying the liberal biases which pervaded British liberal discourse on Prussia during this period, I have attempted to clarify Britain's role in the important developments taking place in Germany at this time, while broadening our appreciation of how and why subsequent scholarship on the German question has so readily embraced the notion that German history is "peculiar". / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

Throughout the period of the American Revolution, Great Britain pursued a policy of reconciliation and reunion toward its North American colonies. While this was but one of the several policy alternatives open to British leadership, it was always an element of British strategy toward the colonies from 1775 to 1783. This thesis follows the evolution of reconciliation and reunion in the final days of crisis in 1774-1775. It seeks to define its development during the war itself, and especially during the abortive American Peace Commission of 1778. By tracing this policy from its emergence through to the peacemaking in 1782-1783, it shows its growth and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses as a coherent whole rather than considering it in relation to particular events. This provides an understanding of why reconciliation and reunion had become the dominant and controlling policy toward America at the time of the Anglo-American negotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris.

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This thesis outlines the history of American ambassadorial representation in England through 1868.

This thesis examines British Foreign Office views of Russia and Anglo-Russian relations prior to the 1907 Anglo-Russian Entente. British diplomatic documents, memoirs, and papers in the Public Record Office reveal diplomatic concern with ending Central Asian tensions. This study examines Anglo-Russian relations from the pre-Lansdowne era, including agreements with Japan (1902) and France (1904), the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, and the shift in Liberal thinking up to the Anglo-Russian Entente. The main reason British diplomats negotiated the Entente was less to end Central Asian friction, this thesis concludes, than the need to check Germany, which some Foreign Office members believed, was bent upon European hegemony.