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The Foreign Policy Of The Opposition

Even if it be granted that Bolingbroke was a “patriotic” nationalist when not in exile, it should be noted that he was not an expansionist, like the seventeenth-century Commonwealth nationalists.  As often with nationalists, a heavy streak of isolationism runs through his writings on England’s dealings with the outside world.  This isolationism is an outgrowth […]

Even if it be granted that Bolingbroke was a “patriotic” nationalist when not in exile, it should be noted that he was not an expansionist, like the seventeenth-century Commonwealth nationalists.  As often with nationalists, a heavy streak of isolationism runs through his writings on England’s dealings with the outside world.  This isolationism is an outgrowth of Bolingbroke’s emphasis on the supremacy of national interest in determining foreign policy.  In his discussion of national interest Bolingbroke emerges an early proponent of what has come to be called the realist theory of international politics, which in England is most closely identified with Tory writers and statesmen….Tory realism holds that the determining factor in a state’s attitude to other states is its national interest, not sentiment, morality, or ideology. ~Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke & His Circle

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