UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
INTERNATIONAL HISTORY
M.Phil International Relations and M.Phil Politics
GRAND STRATEGY:
BRITAIN, EUROPE AND
WORLD POWER
The course covers the history of British and European grand strategic
thought, and its relationship to the development of international history.
This is very much an introductory course—of thirteen lectures and
seminars—that emphasises the ‘big themes’. The lectures cover the
evolution of British and European policy from 1789, which heralded a new
phase in international geopolitics, to the present day. The seminars involve
a combination of texts and primary sources, including official documents
and public treatises. They will also feature workshops for students to
present their solutions to the most pressing security issues facing British
and world leaders, both historic and contemporary, in a simulated
policymaking environment.
The course is conceptually structured around ‘grand strategy’ and
‘geopolitics’ in a way that will make it of
interest to those who have a background
in any period of the history of modern
international relations. We aim to teach
students to think strategically about
Britain’s role in Europe, and Europe’s
role in the world.
Brendan Simms (Director of Forum on
Geopolitics, POLIS)
[email protected]
Assisted by Steven McGregor
[email protected]
Course Requirements
Exam, Essay and Scenarios
You will be marked on an invigilated essay-style exam. Practice Essay
topics will be based on the material addressed in the readings,
lectures and seminars.
Website
There is a complementary website - http://europeangeopolitics.blogspot.co.uk/- for this course, which will contain
additional articles, information, institutions and links. It will also be
updated throughout the course.
Required Texts
It is desirable that you tackle this background reading in advance. It
would also be very helpful if you invested in a historical atlas.
Edward Mead Earle, with Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert, eds.,
Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).
Paul Kennedy, The rise and fall of the Great Powers: Economic change and
military conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London, 1988).
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York and London, 1994).
Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of
History for Decision Makers, (New York, 1986)
David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in
the 20th Century (New York, 1991).
.
Brendan Simms, Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy (New York, 2013)
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Useful journals to consult include: International History Review,
Historical Journal, Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Journal of Cold
War Studies, Diplomacy and Statecraft.
For various articles and reviews see also: New York Review of Books,
London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Affairs, The
National Interest.
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Reading for Seminars
Seminar 1: The French Bid for Mastery, 1789-1815
Primary Sources
The Declaration of Pillnitz, 1791 (see Camtools)
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter
Paret (Princeton, 1989), Bk. 1, Ch. 1
Secondary Sources
Michael Duffy, ‘Britain as a European ally, 1789-1815’, in Diplomacy and
statecraft, 8, 3 (1997)
Paul Schroeder, ‘Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: A Criminal Enterprise,” in The
Journal of Military History, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Apr., 1990), pp. 147-162
Brendan Simms, ‘A false principle in the Law of Nations’: Burke, state
sovereignty, [German] liberty, and intervention in the age of Westphalia,’ in
Brendan Simms and David Trim (eds.) Humanitarian Intervention: A History
(Cambridge, 2011)
Seminar 2: Concert of Europe, 1815-1848
Primary Sources
Alphonse de LaMartine, “Manifesto to Europe” (see Camtools)
Karl Marx, Readings from The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker
(New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978) – Communist
Manifesto, pp. 473-83
Secondary Sources
G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the
Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (Princeton UP, 2001 paperback), chapter
four, "The Settlement of 1815", pp. 80-116.
Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored (New York, Grosset and Dunlap,
1964). ‘Introduction’, ‘The Continental Statesman’, ‘The Insular Statesman’
and ‘Metternich and the Definition of Political Equilibrium’, chapters 1- 4,
and chapters, 16 and 17.
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Seminar 3: The Era of Unifications, 1849-1871
Primary Sources
“Austria, Prussia and Germany, 1806-1871”, edited by Jon Breuilly, (See
Camtools)
Secondary Sources
James M. McPherson, “The Whole Family of Man’: Lincoln and the Last
Best Hope Abroad,” in Robert E. May, The Union, the Confederacy and the
Atlantic Rim (Lafayette, Ind., 1995)
William Carr, The origins of the wars of German unification (London and New
York, 1991), chapter 4.
Frank J. Coppa, The Italian Wars of Independence, (London and New York,
1992), chapter 6.
Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It
Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2001), pp. 99-131, 174-263.
Seminar 4: Bismarckian Geopolitics, 1871-1890
Primary Sources
“Bismarck and Europe”, edited by W.N. Medlicott and Dorothy K.
Coveney, (See Camtools)
Extract from Bismarck, The Man, The Statesman. Vol2, pp 231-296.
Secondary Sources
David Calleo, The German problem reconsidered: Germany and the world
order, 1870 to the present, (Cambridge, 1978), chapter 2
Holger H. Herwig, ‘Strategic Uncertainties of a Nation-State:
Prussia-Germany, 1871-1918’, in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and
Alvin Bernstein, eds., The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chapter 9.
Henry Kissinger, ‘The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck’,
Daedalus 97, no. 3 (Summer 1968): 888-924
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Seminar 5: Imperial Geopolitics, 1890-1905
Primary Sources
Theodore Roosevelt, Annual Message to Congress, December 6th 1904
H.J. Mackinder, "The Geographical Pivot of History", Geographical Journal
23, no. 6 (April 1904), 421-423, 432- 437, and commentary.
A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (1890) (New
York: Dover Publications, 1987), pp. 1-12, 25-89.
Secondary Sources
Aaron L. Friedberg (1987), Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline,
1895-1905, in Journal of Strategic Studies, 10:3, pp. 331-362
Robert Kagan, Dangerous nation: America’s place in the world from its earliest
days to the dawn of the twentieth century (New York, 2006), Chapt. 12
Charlie Laderman, ‘The Invasion of America by an Englishman: E.D.
Morel and the Anglo-American Intervention in the Congo,’ in William
Mulligan (ed.) The Politics and Culture of Anti-Slavery Movements in Global
Perspective (Palgrave, 2013) (See Camtools)
William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American
Foreign Policy, (University of California Press, 1980), Chapter IV “Theodorus
Pacificus”
Seminar 6: The Great War (1906-1918)
Primary Sources
Eyre Crowe, “Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with
France and Germany”
(http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_the_Present_State_of_Br
itish_Relations_with_France_and_Germany)
Secondary Sources
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, (London, 1998), chapt. 3
Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (New York, 1967),
chapters 1 + 2
Otte, T.G., ‘”Almost a Law of Nature “? Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign
Office, and the Balance of Power in Europe, 1905-12’, Diplomacy and
Statecraft 14:2 (2003), pp.77-118.
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Seminar 7: Utopian Geopolitics (1), 1917-1924
Primary Sources
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, (London,
1919)
Halford Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A study in the politics of
reconstruction, (New York, 1919)
Woodrow Wilson, Address to the U.S. Senate, Jan. 22, 1917
Secondary Sources
Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and its Attempt
to End War, (London, 2001)
Alan Sharp, ‘The enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919-1923’, in
Diplomacy and Statecraft, 16 (2005), pp. 423-438.
Seminar 8: Utopian Geopolitics (2), 1924-1940
Primary Sources
Adolf Hitler, Gerhard Weinberg (ed.), Hitler’s Second Book: The
Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, (Enigma Books: annotated
edition, 2006)
“The Hossbach Memorandum,”
(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/hossbach.asp)
Secondary Sources
B.J.C. McKercher - Deterrence and the European Balance of Power: The
Field Force and British Grand Strategy, 1934-1938, English Historical
Review, 123(2008)
Gerhard L. Weinberg, "Hitler's Image of the United States," American
Historical Review, 69, No. 4, (July, 1964), pp. 1006-1021
David Reynolds, ‘1940: fulcrum of the twentieth century?’,
International Affairs, 66/2 (1990), 325-350
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Seminar 9: World War and Superpowers, 1940-1947
Primary Sources
“The Atlantic Charter”,
(http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_16912.htm)
George F. Kennan, “The Long Telegram”
(http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/d
ocuments/pdf/6-6.pdf)
Secondary Sources
Nicholas J. Cull, ‘Selling Peace: The Origins, Promotion and Fate of
the Anglo-American New Order during the Second World War’, in
Diplomacy and Statecraft, 7/1 (March 1996), pp. 1-28.
David Reynolds, From World War to Cold War: Churchill, Roosevelt and
the International History of the 1940s, (Oxford, 2006)
Thompson, John A., ‘Conceptions of national security and American
entry into world war II’, in Diplomacy and statecraft, 16 (2005), 671697.
Seminar 10: Partitions, 1947-1972
Primary Sources
Kissinger, Henry A., Nuclear weapons and foreign policy (New York, 1957)
Secondary Sources
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American
National Security Policy during the Cold War, revised and expanded edition
(New York, 2005) Chapters 1-8.
Jussi M. Hanhimaeki, ‘Détente in Europe, 1962-1975’, in Melvyn P. Leffler
and Odd Arne Westad (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume
II. Crises and détente
David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the
20th Century, (New York, 1991), Chapters 7 and 8
Klaus Schwabe, ‘The Cold War and European integration, 1947-63’, in
Diplomacy and Statecraft, 12/4 (December 2001)
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Seminar 11: The Rise of Democratic Geopolitics, 1973-1985
Primary Sources
Ken Coates, ‘European nuclear disarmament’, Spokesman 38 (1980) (contains
the text of the Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament, April 1980’.
‘Common sense and the common danger. Policy statement of the
Committee on the present danger’, in Charles Tyroler II (ed.), Alerting
America: the papers of the Committee on the present danger introduced by
Max M. Kampelman (Washington D.C., 1984)
“Kissinger Memorandums”, GWU National Security Archives (see
Camtools)
Secondary Sources
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American
National Security Policy during the Cold War, revised and expanded edition
(New York, 2005) Chapters 9 and 10
David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the
20th Century, (New York, 1991), Chapters 9 and 10
Tony Smith, America’s mission. The United States and the worldwide struggle
for democracy in the twentieth century, (Princeton N.J., 1994), chapter 9.
Seminar 12: The Triumph of Democratic Geopolitics, 1986-1992
Primary Sources
George H. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, (New York,
1998), chapter 6
Secondary Sources
Michael Cox and Steven Hurst, ‘”His Finest Hour?” George Bush and
the Diplomacy of German Unification’, in Diplomacy and Statecraft,
13/4 (December 2002), pp. 123-150.
From Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, eds., The Cambridge History
of the Cold War (New York: 2011)
Beth A. Fischer, “US Foreign Policy under Reagan and Bush,” vol. III, pp.
267-88
Archie Brown, “The Gorbachev Revolution and the End of the Cold War,”
vol. III, 244-66.
John Lewis Gaddis, “Grand Strategies in the Cold War,” II, 1-21.
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Seminar 13: Visions of the New World Order,1993-
Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, (London, 2004) Parts 1 and 3.
Francis Fukuyama, ‘The end of History?’ in The National Interest, Summer
1989.
Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World
Order, (New York, 2003)
Robert Kagan, The World America Made, (Vintage, 2013)
Fareed Zakaria, Post-American World, (New York, 2008)
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