The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain - A Study of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion

FEW MATTERS can be of greater importance at the present day
than the establishment of mutual trust and toleration between
the Soviet Union and English-speaking peoples. It is my hope
that the present study of the origins and early development of
Russophobia in Great Britain may in some slight measure foster
such sympathy. The story is one of the disruption of cordiality
and the growth of hostility between Russia and the United
Kingdom at a time when the basic foreign policies of the two
nations were, if not identical, at least complementary. It is to
be hoped that relatively trivial disagreements will not again
perpetuate a lack of mutual understanding and thus induce
insuperable fear and hatred.
In spite of the fact that the period comprehended by the study
is only a quarter century, with the heart of the problem falling
into little more than a decade, its scope should not appear to
be unduly narrow, since it includes a careful survey of Anglo-
Russian relations and of British policy toward Russia between
1815 and 1841, which has nowhere appeared in print, and an
analysis of Anglo-Russian commercial relations, as well as a
chapter in the intellectual biography of Great Britain.
This study is based upon both manuscript and printed
sources. Manuscripts in the Public Record Office included all
the correspondence of the foreign office with the British embassy
in St. Petersburg and with the Russian embassy in
London between 1815 and 1841, other materials, chiefly minutes
and memoranda, from the files of the foreign office and
the embassy in St. Petersburg, selected portions of the correspondence
with the British missions in Paris, Constantinople,