ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Extract

The editorial project ‘British Envoys to Germany’ was initiated with the aim of shedding new light on official British perceptions of German affairs and the states of the German Confederation, and thereby contributing to the historiography of nineteenth-century Anglo-German relations. As hoped at the outset, the diplomatic dispatches proved to be a valuable source, providing insights into many aspects of nineteenth-century history. The quantity and quality of reporting, the informative and often subtle nature of the dispatches, and the freedom of their authors to report on topics other than the political made working on the dispatches a challenging and often very enjoyable task. The selection in this series gives an idea of the richness of the thousands of letters stored at The National Archives, and a visit to Kew is recommended to anyone who wants to ‘delve’ into the nineteenth-century diplomats' world and Anglo-German relations at that time.