In 1871 Anglo-German relations entered a new phase that was keenly observed by the British diplomats to Germany whose reports are included in this volume (the first of a two-volume mini-series which covers the years up to 1897). Yet, when compared with the reports from the German Confederation selected for the preceding series, British Envoys to Germany, 1816–1866, change was subtle, and many of the qualities and characteristics of the diplomatic reportage from Germany can be seen to persist. In fact, the seemingly anachronistic maintenance of British diplomatic relations with the federal states of the newly founded German empire has inspired the continuation of the Envoys editorial project. While diplomatic reports from Germany after 1897 – when dispatches from the smaller German courts gradually lose their bite – have been made widely available through previous document collections, British Envoys to the Kaiserreich presents far less well-known perspectives on and attitudes towards Germany. These multifaceted observations by British diplomats preclude any sort of teleological account of the new Kaiserreich leading up to 1914, and it is to be hoped that there will be future opportunity (and funding) to present the reportage in the eventful years 1867–1870 in order to gain an even more nuanced understanding of nineteenth-century Anglo–German relations.

As with the preceding series, the publication of this volume depended on the institutional support of the German Historical Institute London (GHIL). I should like to thank the Institute's advisory board and its chairperson, Andreas Fahrmeir, for their constant endorsement, and the Institute's director, Andreas Gestrich, for his trust and confidence in the project and its collaborators. I am indebted to the late Hagen Schulze under whose directorship the idea of extending the edition into the Kaiserreich was first mooted. Without him this undertaking would not have started.

My special thanks also go to my colleagues at the GHIL for their invaluable comments and especially their patience during the many presentations of the project's progress at our staff away days, in London and Cambridge. Among the wider network of colleagues who have supported and helped throughout, I should like to single out James Retallack from the University of Toronto. Above all, he pointed us in the direction of the wonderful dispatches by George Strachey from Dresden, which are among the most intriguing and interesting examples of diplomatic reportage from Germany.

The editorial process was ably assisted by the expertise of the staff at the National Archives, the British Library, and the Bavarian State Library as well as many other archives and libraries in Germany and the United Kingdom and was much appreciated throughout. In addition, the ever-growing electronic resources and collections available on the internet facilitated the often painstaking process of researching, on occasion, seemingly the most minute of details. It is to my great pleasure that the electronic version of this edition can be freely shared and used under the terms of a Creative Commons licence. This ‘gold’ open access complements the digital index (https://www.ghil.ac.uk/envoys) which combines the present volume and those of the previous series of British Envoys to Germany.

Melanie Howe and Daniel Pearce from Cambridge University Press, and especially our copy-editor, Miranda Bethell, saw this book through the printing process. Their professionalism was exemplary. Special thanks also go to Emma Griffin, literary director of the Royal Historical Society, and her predecessor, Arthur Burns, who both paved the way for the continued and much valued cooperation between the Royal Historical Society (RHS) and the German Historical Institute London. I am likewise grateful to the RHS publications committee for accepting this work and the subsequent volume for publication in the Camden Fifth Series. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reader.

And finally I would particularly like to thank Chris Manias, who at the beginning of this project, sifted the holdings of the National Archives and unearthed dispatches in the first round of selection, and my co-editor, Helen Whatmore, who worked untiringly to make sense of nineteenth-century idiosyncrancies and contributed to all aspects of this edition. Without this collaboration the production of this book would not only have been much less successful, but also much less enjoyable.

London, July 2016

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