Book Reviews : The Diplomacy of the Great Powers. Sir William Hayter. Hamish Hamilton. 10s. 6d
| Date | 01 April 1961 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711786100200310 |
| Published date | 01 April 1961 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
186
in
the
separate
Malay
States
and
finally
into
accepting,
within
a
constitu-
tional
framework
of
indirect
rule,
a
very
direct
responsibility
for
govern-
ment.
The
author
has
made
a
&dquo;
great
and
original
contribution
&dquo; by
estab-
lishing
beyond
all
doubt
as
a
result
of
research
into
the
Colonial
and
Foreign
Office
records
that
the
assumption
of
responsibility
was
indeed
reluctant
and
eventually
amounted
to
the
recognition
of
a
fait
accompli
by
local
officials
acting
beyond
their
orders.
We
are
still
too
near
the
events
for
a
final
judgement
as
to
whether
the
officials
concerned
were
right
or
wrong,
or
whether
the
British
Government’s
negative
policy
was
in
any
way
realistic
or
adequate
under
the
circumstances
of
complete
chaos
prevailing
in
Malaya
at
that
time.
It
is,
however,
difficult
to
see
how
otherwise
modern
independent
Malaya
could
have
emerged
as
the
most
prosperous
and
best
governed
State
of
South-East
Asia.
But
it
is
quite
clear
from
the
record
that
neither
Gladstone’s
Liberal
nor
Disraeli’s
Con-
servative
Government
had
any
wish
to
assume
the
burden
of
ultimate
responsibility-though
it
is
true
that
before
the
Liberal
loss
of
the
1874
election
they
had
been
forced
to
admit
that
some
effort
to
establish
at
least
rudimentary
order
must
be
made
if
only,
the
deciding
factor,
to
prevent
some
other
power
intervening
to
do
so.
Perhaps
the
main
interest
of
the
book
lies
in
the
author’s
analysis
of
the
characters
involved
in
these
events,
particularly
of
those
of
the
three
suc-
cessive
Governors
of
the
Straits
Settlements.
It is
also
very
interesting
to
learn
more
of
the
directors
of
the
Selangor
Tin
Mines
whose
scare
over
the
imminence
of
a
foreign
intervention,
that
was
probably
utterly
imaginary,
finally
turned
the
scales
in
Whitehall-but
this
line
of
investigation
would
need
to
be
pursued
in
Malaya
as
well
as
in
London.
As
usual
British
foreign
policy
was
pragmatic,
concerned
mainly
with
the
protection
of
the
Chinese
sea-lanes.
But
British
citizens,
both
European
and
Chinese,
were
hotly
engaged
in
the
exploitation
of
Malayan
tin.
The
net
result
was
a
degree
of
disorder
which
the
Malay
rulers
without
any
governmental
organisation
or
police
forces,
and
themselves
in
shameless
competition
for
any
stray
pickings,
were
powerless
to
control.
From
this point
there
is
both
a
sense
of
the
unavoidability
of
events
and
of
a
feeling
that
the
actors
in
the
drama
were
merely
pawns
in
the
hands
of
a
fate
which
proved
ultimately
benevolent.
The
Diplomacy
of
the
Great
Powers.
Sir
William
Hayter.
Hamish
Hamilton.
10s.
6d.
This
short
book,
by
the
Warden
of
New
College,
a
former
Ambassador
in
Moscow
and
Deputy
Under-Secretary
in
the
Foreign
Office,
sets
out
to
prove
the
author’s
thesis
that
diplomacy
is
not
foreign
policy,
nor
even
co-extensive
with
it.
It
is
merely
one
of
the
means
of
carrying
it
out,
a
method
not
an
end.
Perhaps
one
of
our
cardinal
mistakes
nowadays
is
to
regard
it
as
the
former
so
that
every
diplomatic
encounter
tends
to
become
a
public
occasion.
The
rapier
is
the
traditional
weapon
of
the
diplomat-
the
bludgeon
is
more
suitable
for
the
mass
media
of
the
international
conference.
Even
Sir
William,
however,
is
not
able
to
entirely
disentangle
some
of
the
more
intertwined
aspects
of
the
two.
But
by
and
large
he
succeeds
in
distinguishing
between
diplomacy
proper
and
the
ancillary
instruments
-all
of
them
usually
centred
in
the
Embassy
abroad-the
defence
services,
the
economic
department
concerned
with
trade
and
aid,
the
information,
cultural
and
propaganda
services
and,
in
some
instances
at
least,
espionage
and
political
subversion.
His
emphasis
is
on
the
preservation
of
peace
as
the
most
important
of
all
interests
in
the
policy
of
his
own
country-a
belief
that
led
straight
to
Munich
not
long
since.
His
analysis
in
these
brief
essays
is
acute
and
illuminating.
Though
he
has
no
startlingly
new
light
to
throw
on
diplomatic
problems
he
avoids
both
the
frivolity
that
too
often
mars
such
works
and
the
errors
into
which
the
non-professional
in
this
field
is
so
apt
to
fall.
He
considers
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