Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894-1917

Britain and the Last Tsar is a fundamental re-interpretation of British foreign and defense policy before the First World War. The currect orthodoxy asserts that the rise of an aggressive and powerful Germany forced Britain—a declining power—to abandon her traditional policy of avoiding alliances and to enter into alliance with Japan (1902), France (1904), and Russia (1907) in order to contain the German menace. In a controversial rejection of this theory, Keith Neilson argues that Britain was the pre-eminent world power in 1914 and that Russia, not Germany, was the principal long-term threat to Britain's global position. This original and important study shows that only by examining Anglo-Russian relations and eliminating an undue emphasis on Anglo-German affairs can an accurate picture of Britain's foreign and defense policy before 1914 be gained.