Excerpt from The History of British Foreign Policy: From the Earliest Times to 1912 But I think the time has come for some such presentation of British foreign policy as a whole, and for an account of the continuous develop ment of that policy. It has often been necessary for Great Britain to prefer isolation to unsatisfactory alliances. On certain well-known crises in European history, however, the active intervention of England on the continent, in the interests of the European world no less than in that of England herself, has been demanded. The attempt of Philip Valois in conjunction with the Count of Flanders to destroy the trade between Flanders and England would, if success ful, have established French predominance over the Netherlands. This attempt was one of the causes of the Hundred Years' War. In the sixteenth century it was not till the danger of Holland falling into the hands of Philip II. Became imminent that Elizabeth took definite action. Again, about a hundred and fifteen years later, the seizure of the Barrier Towns by Louis XIV. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.