INTRODUCTION

Lord Salisbury dominated British foreign policy for the better part of a quarter of a century at the close of the Victorian era. Between 1878 and 1902, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, served four times as foreign secretary and was thrice prime minister, for the most part holding the two positions in conjunction. A high Tory, wary of the two mid-Victorian extensions of the franchise and given to ‘gloomy thoughts’ about the undesirability of progress, his principal political interests lay in the field of foreign affairs, still relatively shielded from public interference as it then was. The intricacies of international diplomacy, his daughter and biographer reflected, appealed to his ‘instinctive reverence for facts’. The conditions of the unreformed,Victorian Foreign Office were a conducive environment for the reclusive Marquess. He took, at best, an intermittent interest in the administration of his department; and in official business he was ‘Olympian and aloof ’, as one of his private secretaries later observed.

That characterization might equally well be applied to Salisbury's attitude towards Japan. Indeed, for all his political longevity and the wealth of his often incisive comments on events elsewhere, it is difficult to establish, with any degree of precision, Salisbury's views of the East Asian island power. There are few extensive comments from his pen, especially so during his earlier periods in office. This should not come as a surprise to students of Anglo-Japanese relations. In his foreign policy Salisbury was driven by pragmatic considerations of British strategic priorities; and he regarded diplomacy as a moderating force that helped to identify and then to build on mutual interests. For Salisbury Japan's significance was thus defined by Britain's broader strategic interests and by the state of her relations with other Powers, principally those with Russia. Sketching Salisbury's perceptions of Japan thus throws into sharper relief the shifts in the wider international landscape, the emergence of Japan as a major Power, and the evolving nature of Anglo-Japanese relations.

‘THE MUSHROOM CIVILIZATION OF THE JAPANESE’: SALISBURY AND JAPAN 1878–1892

It has been argued by imperial historians that, for the British, ‘the Empire reinforced a hierarchical view of the world’. This applied not only to the administration of colonial possessions, but also to foreign policy.