The making of Elizabethan foreign policy, 1558-1603 / R. B. Wernham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wernham, R. B. (Richard Bruce), 1906-1999.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Una's lectures ; 3.

Una's lectures ; 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Great Britain--Foreign relations--1485-1603.

Great Britain.

International relations.

Physical Description:

vii, 109 pages : maps ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [1980]

Summary:

Elizabethan foreign policy was very much the policy of Queen Elizabeth I herself. It was not foreplanned, envisaged whole in advance. It was built up out of her responses to questions and problems posed by her relations with neighboring and, in the case of France and Spain, far more powerful countries. These responses, inspired by consistant instincts and opinions concerning her own country's true interests, grew into a coherent policy. She was, of course, influenced by her councillors and other advisors and by the religious temper and commercial interests of her subjects, and this book begins by attempting to assess the roles played by these various influences. It then studies in some detail the two great quarrels with Spain, that of 1568-1572, which ended peacefully, and that of 1585 onward, which culminated in the Armada of 1588 and the long war that continued for the rest of Elizabeth's reign. The book looks at the problems encountered by a woman ruler in controlling operations of war, and at the frustrations caused by the weakness of her French and Dutch allies as well as the vagaries of her own commanders. It emphasizes how poor communications and unreliable or delayed intelligence hampered decisions on strategy. It discusses how the heavy burdens imposed by the long war provoked a more critical attitude in the later Parliaments and among local authorities toward the central government. Finally, it shows how the Spanish war and privateering accelerated the redeployment of English trade and maritime activities away from Europe, a trend that had begun with the decline of the great Antwerp market which had absorbed so much of English commerce during the first half of the sixteenth century. English foreign policy, which previously had little concern with regions other than those immediately opposite its own shore, was thus given new dimensions. The Ocean began to challenge the Continent for predominant influence, as it was to continue to do until the development of air power deprived England of the shield that insularity had so long provided.

Contents:

I. The Makers of Policy 1

II. The First Quarrels with Spain 23

III. The Coming of War 45

IV. Ocean and Continent 71

Map 1. Spain, France, and the British Isles 24

Map 2. Northern France and the Netherlands 46

Map 3. The North Atlantic 62.

Notes:

Includes index.

Bibliography: pages 97-99.

ISBN:

0520039661 :

OCLC:

6015879