Splendid Isolation is a popular conception of the foreign policy pursued by Britain during the late 19th century, under the Conservative premierships of Benjamin Disraeli and the Marquess of Salisbury. The term was actually coined by a Canadian politician to praise Britain's lack of involvement in European affairs. There has been much debate between historians over whether this policy was intentional or whether Britain was simply forced into the position by contemporary events. Some historians, such as John Charmley, have argued that Splendid Isolation was a fiction for the period prior to the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1892, and only something forced on them against their will following it.
Read more about Splendid Isolation: Origin of The Phrase, Background, Change, Abandonment, The Return of The Phrase in The 21st Century
Famous quotes containing the words splendid and/or isolation:
“Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)