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Copyright of Cahiers Victoriens & Edouardiens is the property of Presses Universitaires de la Mediterranee and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The 2018 Skripal poisonings prompted the heavy securitisation of UK-Russian relations. Despite the ensuing tight coordination between the Russian government and state-aligned television, this article argues that in today's mediatised environment – in which social and political activities fuse inextricably with their own mediation – even non-democracies must cope with the shaping of global communications by media logics and related market imperatives. With a range of media actors responding to events, and to each other, on multiple digital platforms, no state could assert full narrative control over the Skripal incident. Counterintuitively, Russian journalists' journalistic agency was enhanced by mediatisation processes: their state sponsors, seeking to instrumentalise reporting, delegated agency to journalists more attuned to such processes; yet commercial imperatives obliged them to perform independence and professional credibility. These competing forms of agency clashed with one another, and with that of the audiences engaging in real time with the journalists' outputs, ultimately undermining the Russian state's efforts to harness news coverage to its political and security goals. The article concludes that in today's global communications environment, mediatisation substantially constrains the ability of non-democracies to micro-manage journalists' treatment of major events relating to national security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Le Queux's writings about Russia both reflected and shaped the construction of the country in the British imagination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first part examines Le Queux's early novels, showing how his conviction that tsarist Russia posed a major threat to the security of the British Empire was reflected in his surprisingly positive treatment of the Russian revolutionary movement. The second part then examines how Le Queux's later writings on Russia reflected the changing nature of international politics following the outbreak of war in 1914. Russia's new-found status as Britain's ally in the First World War shaped the content of a number of books written by Le Queux in 1917–1918. These include Rasputin the Rascal Monk (1917) and The Minister of Evil: The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia (1918), in which Le Queux claimed that Rasputin was a creature of the German government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain's involvement in the Russian Civil War was an attempt by the greatest maritime power in the world to project power decisively against continental-power Russia; to overturn the Bolshevik Revolution and prevent the spread of communism across Europe. This article briefly examines the Royal Navy's Baltic Campaign during the pivotal year of 1919 and especially during October, with counter-revolutionary White General Nikolai Yudenich's final lunge towards Petrograd. Although the existing literature predominantly ascribes a great moral and strategic victory to modern naval deterrence -- the protection of the Baltic States on the one hand and against German-led forces on the other -- the historical evidence suggest a much more nuanced definition of 'victory'. British sea power was not able to destroy the Red Fleet anchored at Kronstadt, nor secure Yudenich's left flank by overpowering the outlying coastal fortress of Krasanaya Gorka. As a result, the entire White offensive was thrown off-balance and ultimately ill-fated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how effectively Britain secured its diplomatic communications against hostile decryption during the early Cold War. It shows that between 1945 and 1970 the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office introduced and operated four advanced cipher machines, Typex, Rockex, Noreen and Alvis, which produced very strong ciphers. However, Britain did suffer physical compromises of Rockex through Soviet espionage and an attack on the British embassy in Beijing. Rockex was also vulnerable to technical surveillance of its acoustic and Tempest emissions, and the Soviets exploited this to read the encrypted communications of the British embassy in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 1980 proved to be a time of diplomatic crisis for the British government and the Commonwealth due to the confluence of two events: a British Lions tour of South Africa and the Moscow Olympics. The Thatcher government debated its Commonwealth counterparts over the perceived hypocrisy of British policy towards South Africa and Moscow. While the British government campaigned internationally for a boycott of the Moscow Games, many African and Caribbean countries believed Britain was taking a harder line against Moscow than in enforcing the Gleneagles Agreement to end all sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa. This inconsistency led to threats of retaliation from African countries and seriously affected the influence Britain had in Africa during the period of Rhodesian independence and the ongoing conflict in Namibia. Controversy erupted surrounding the plans for a British Lions tour, how the invasion of Afghanistan changed the target of the Moscow boycott, and about the discussions between Britain and other countries about sporting 'double standards'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a broad view of Anglo-Russian relations in the years between the Peace of Paris, 1856, and the death of Viscount Palmerston, 1865, examining the shifts within that period in an essentially high-political diplomatic history. It traces a number of strands in geopolitics, offering a sense of the competing strategies of the European Great Powers, particularly the roles of British diplomats: the private and public communication amongst prime ministers, foreign secretaries, ambassadors, ministers-plenipotentiaries and consular officials concerning British policy towards Russia in the post-Crimean War period. It outlines the principles that underlay that policy and the ways in which the diplomatic network observed the tsar and his advisors and agents, assessed the developing situation in Russia, Central Asia, and the Ottoman Balkans, made decisions, and implemented policy. It focusses on the diplomatists’ attitudes and perceptions—how they thought about Russia and British interests and how they worked to protect them. It also analyses British policy in light of the European dimension. The years 1856 to 1865 not only witnessed Russian attempts to undermine the Crimean settlement, they also saw revisionist Bonapartist France work to destroy the constraining Vienna system of 1815—primarily in northern Italy. These policies complicated British attempts to maintain the status-quo and defend their interests in the East. The evolving situation was highly complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, formerly British permanent representative to the UN, who has had long experience of dealing with Russia in the context of diplomacy, considers whether the current moment of Russian dominance in Syria and the Middle East, combined with the recent general disengagement of the western powers in the region, could be considered as marking the beginning of a general period of Russian hegemony in the Middle East. The article takes into account the global geopolitical situation, the recent history of Russia and the Middle East, the consequences of western intervention in Iraq, and the motivations of the Russian government particularly in view of its recent engagement in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines consequences of Brexit, Great Britain's decision to leave the membership of European Union (EU), on British relations with Russia and China, as of December 2016. Topics discussed include post-Brexit settlement; different types of possible effect upon the practice and substance of European Union's aid rules; and constitutional referendum made in relation to the June 2016 Brexit poll.

In 1891, southern Russia experienced a famine which affected 30-40 million people in an area the size of France, killing 650,000 in the highest estimates. The response of the Russian government was widely criticized by both opponents within Russia and observers abroad. This article analyses the response of the British liberal press and the Quaker relief fund, considering how the famine and its causes were presented with respect to the tsarist government's culpability and ideas of Russian backwardness. It goes on to show how the framing of Quaker relief work highlighted these ideas of Russian underdevelopment and mismanagement, and advanced a liberal internationalist position within Britain. It is argued that we cannot explain the appeal of humanitarianism purely by its aesthetics of suffering and sympathy, but must also look to a wider range of social and political values held by its protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from a September 3-5, 2015 conference of the Prinz-Albert-Gesellschaft society in Coburg, Germany on the impact of the 1815 Congress of Vienna on British and European peace in the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics of presentations delivered include the impact of the War of 1812 on European power structures, the role of British-Russian relations in fostering European peace, and the impact of the Congress on the transatlantic slave trade.

The Treaty of Portsmouth could not solve all the diplomatic problems between Russia and Japan, and dissenting voices were heard in both countries. Nevertheless, Russo-Japanese relations went in the direction of not only normalization, but also building an alliance. That radical change from hostility has not often happened in history and needs careful research, in particular the early stages of this process after the conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth. The construction of an alliance was not the primary goal at the beginning of Russo-Japanese negotiations after the war between the two nations. This goal appeared during the process of solving different problems, and so the international situation is extremely important to understand changes in Russo-Japanese relations. This process had several facets. First, there was the deterioration in Anglo-German relations with a corresponding realignment of British policy towards Russia. Second was the resolution of problems in Central Asia between Russia and Great Britain. Third, there was the mutual interests Japan and Russia had in China, in particular rail interests, which were related to the organic unity of the northern part of the Russian railroad in China. Finally, Russia had the desire to keep relations with France as a corner-stone of foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the experiences and impressions of British military unit that fought on the Eastern Front of World War I. The unit was reportedly established by Member of Parliament Oliver Locker Lampson who raised funds to purchase armoured cars and guns. Also discussed are Great Britain's alliance with Russia, the unit's deployment in Belgium in 1914, and the disconnection in the understanding of the war.

The article discusses the status of the cooperation among Russia, the U.S. and Great Britain. Topics mentioned include the role of the Yalta agreements in restoring postwar world order, the symbolism of the Yalta Conference as a global governance, and the responsibility of Great Powers for the fates of smaller nations.

Baron Al'fons Al'fonsovich Geiking (Alfons von Heyking, 1860–1930) served as Russian consul in Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England from 1899 to 1908. His many publications included a 688-page book, England, Its State, Social and Economic Structure: Investigations and Observations in Imperial Russian Consular Service (St Petersburg, 1909). The article gives three reasons for the view that his body of work deserves to be brought into the scholarly domain. First, it pointed out the valuable insights that could be supplied by consuls (more valuable, in Geiking's view, than those of diplomats). Second, it drew in large measure on Geiking's first-hand knowledge of Britain's industrial north (whereas many representatives of foreign countries in Britain came to know only London and the surrounding counties). Third, Geiking was writing at a time of change in Anglo-Russian relations, when the two countries, perennially ambivalent about one another, started associating more closely in the wake of the Entente of 1907. Since, after Newcastle, Geiking served for eight years as Russian Consul-General in London, he was a not inconsiderable figure in the web of connections between Britain and Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses shifts in Great Britain's society, economy and foreign policy, focusing on how Russia fits into these shifts. Topics of the article include increases in British trade with Russia since 2010, increases in the Middle Eastern immigrant population of Great Britain, and the role of Russian diplomats in Great Britain. It also discusses the restoration of the Russian Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God and all Saints in London, England.

Launched eleven years apart, the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg and the Royal Academy of Arts in London developed a stimulating dialogue in the decades following their foundation. This article explores the emerging relationship between them, and considers the ways in which aspects of governance, policy, and practice in St Petersburg were shared or emulated in London. A particular focus is the mediation of Prince Hoare who, in his official correspondence with the Russian Academy in the early nineteenth century, generated a more international understanding of Russia's premier art school. Rather than being an isolated institution on the periphery of the academic map, the Imperial Academy emerges in this account as a welcome contributor to pan-European academic discourse, and an intriguing new model of how official public patronage might nurture and support the visual arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on hitherto unused archival material, this article reconstructs the genesis of a clandestine mission to Germany by Sir Edward Grey's private secretary, Sir William Tyrrell, planned for the summer of 1914. The mission remained abortive, but it offers fresh insights into a growing sense of détente in Great Power relations on the eve of the First World War. Although the episode involved key officials in London and Berlin, the article emphasizes that, pace many recent scholars of the period, the Anglo-German antagonism was not the central concern of British policy-makers. Rather, relations between the two countries were a function of Anglo-Russian relations, and the revival of Russian power after 1912 provides the proper context to the attempts by British and German officials to place relations between their countries on a friendlier footing. The article thus also calls into question criticisms of the British foreign secretary as irrevocably ententiste, and provides an antidote to assumptions of the First World War as somehow inevitable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the relationship between the threat perception analyses of the British Admiralty and the strategic orientation of the Royal Navy at the outset of the twentieth century. The current view is that this was an era when fear of France and Russia drove British naval policy. However, as this article will show, Britain's Naval Intelligence Department formed a low opinion of French and Russian naval capabilities at this time and this negative evaluation exerted considerable influence over decision making. The belief that, owing to multiple qualitative deficiencies, these powers could definitely be beaten in battle lessened the standing of the Franco-Russian naval challenge and freed the Admiralty to consider the danger posed by other possible enemies, most notably Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents the main conceptual intersections and differences between postcolonial studies as a product of the anglophone world, of the history of relations between the British Empire and its colonies, and a critical analysis of post-Soviet discourses and processes, particularly in relation to Russia/USSR and its ex-colonies. This complicates the dichotomous scheme west versus east, north versus south, reflecting the difference between historical colonialisms and the phenomenon of global coloniality, which has assumed a specific guise in Russian/Soviet versions of modernity, marked by external imperial difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia’s popularity as a destination for British grand tourists had grown steadily during the reign of Catherine II and was increased when the traditional routes through France to Italy were blocked as a result of the French Revolution. However, Paul I’s change of allegiances from Britain to France threatened to remove even the possibilities of the ‘northern tour’ until his assassination in March 1801 once more brought the British in numbers to St Petersburg and to Moscow for the coronation of the new tsar. During the subsequent six years, until a new Russo-French treaty at Tilsit in July 1807, British tourists were much in evidence in the salons of the Russian capitals, old and new, and many began to explore the further reaches of the empire, notably the ‘new’ Russia of the Crimea and the Black Sea littoral. The antiquities and archaeological sites of the Crimea inevitably evoked associations with the classical world, particularly for the young Oxbridge tourists, some of whom, fired by the emergent Hellenism of the age, proceeded to Constantinople and on to Greece itself. This study introduces the names, and in several cases the letters and diaries, of many young tourists whose very presence and adventures in Russia are virtually unsuspected and unknown and include in their number the noted Cambridge scholar Charles Kelsall, the talented Viscount Royston, who died on his return journey from Russia, as well as the future father of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and ends with establishing the identity of the author of letters known only from their publication in Russian translation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The phrase “The Great Game” was first used in the context of Russia and Central Asia by the ill-fated Captain Conolly in 1840. For Conolly, the game metaphor signified a contest in which the Russians were Britain's potential opponents, while the Central Asians were her immediate ones. Indeed Conolly, like Thorburn, a later writer, seems even to have envisaged Russia as Britain's partner in the work of civilizing Asia. Boulger, tried to use the phrase to signify Anglo-Russian confrontation but interestingly the phrase was little used in the literature on Central Asia until Kipling's “Kim” endowed it with a popularity and the implication of great power rivalry which it had not previously enjoyed. In fact widespread use only came after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, though “The Great Game” is now in ever more frequent use to signify American/Russian rivalry. Kipling's use has triumphed over Conolly's. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the interaction of the Russian and the British government to "The Great Game" regarding their rivalry in the Central and Eastern Asia during the 19th and 20th century. It says that the Great Game is the story of antagonism between Great Britain and Russia in their government policies for extending their trade in Asia. It also states that the Russian government had presented the British government with three tasks such as to assure the protection of India, to secure the strategic barter itineraries and to maintain the forces' balance in Europe.

In 1915, during the First World War, and in 1935, in the second decade of Soviet rule, two remarkable exhibitions were opened in London. They were devoted to wide-ranging displays of Russian culture and gathered for reasons not least of the historical moment exhibits almost exclusively from British and foreign owners and collectors. The content and significance of these virtually forgotten exhibitions are examined from two angles. Firstly, the exhibitions are sited in the context of Russian and Anglo-Russian exhibitions that occurred both during the period from the Great Exhibition of 1851 and subsequent to them, principally the Great Britain-USSR exhibition of 1967. Secondly, the exhibitions, their settings and the events and personalities connected with them are examined on the basis of their catalogues and press reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relações Internacionais is the property of Relacoes Internacionais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

British attitudes towards tsarist Russia were often extremely negative before the First World War, despite the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907, since the country was still widely seen as a backward land ruled over by an autocratic government. The outbreak of war meant that Russia became a vital ally for Britain in the struggle with the central powers. Its presence in the allied coalition nevertheless made it difficult to present the conflict as a fight for liberty and democracy against Prussian militarism. Although official propaganda focused on presenting a positive image of Britain to other countries, numerous informal efforts were made during the war to promote a more positive image of Russia to a British audience. Writers and journalists such as Stephen Graham and J.W. Mackail built on the growing pre-war interest in Russian literature and ballet to suggest that the country had its own vibrant culture, and could not simply be rejected as a backward nation, but was instead a suitable ally in the war against Germany and Austro-Hungary. There was nevertheless always a tension between those who believed that the vibrancy of Russian culture existed despite the autocratic government of Nicholas II, and other ambassadors of the Russian ‘soul’ who feared that political liberalization would in time undermine a valuable Russian exceptionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]