The Return of the Primacy of Foreign Policy

The debate on the ‘primacy of foreign policy’, whichraged throughout the 1960s and 1970s, has long since peteredout. The introductory chapter to this collection of new studiesin the primacy of foreign policy in German history begins bysummarizing its main tenets, and tries to sketch the historiographicalbackground in broad outline. It notes that the primacy of foreignpolicy was neither completely unchallenged before about 1960,nor totally eclipsed by 1980. More importantly, this chapterdraws attention to the remarkable renaissance which the primacyof foreign policy has enjoyed, objectively if not always subjectively,over the past decade. The result has been to put the state,and especially the struggle between states, back at the centreof historical attention. Finally, the chapter stresses the thematic,geographical, methodological and chronological diversity ofthe four path breaking case studies which make up this specialissue. These range from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentiethcenturies, and they illuminate the primacy of foreign policyfrom the perspective of Vienna as well as Berlin, from the civil-militaryas well as the individual state perspective. The result, itis hoped, is an enhanced sense of the importance of the primacyof foreign policy in German history based on original research.