Negotiating neutrality: Anglo-Spanish relations in the age of appeasement, 1931-1940

This thesis examines Anglo-Spanish relations between 1931 and 1940 within the context of general appeasement. It argues that the British policy of non-intervention in response to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War sought to prevent the conflict escalating into a wider European war and to ensure that it could maintain or establish cordial relations with whichever side emerged victorious. However, due to General Franco’s military successes, the support he received from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and the geostrategic importance of the Iberian Peninsula in British government’s Mediterranean strategy, Britain’s non-intervention policy evolved into a policy of appeasing Franco which remained in place beyond the Civil War and throughout the Second World War. This policy aimed to drive a wedge between Franco and the Axis Powers to prevent Spain’s incorporation into the Rome-Berlin Axis and ensure the neutrality of the Iberian Peninsula. In this sense, the British government’s recognition of Franco and abandonment of the Spanish Republic in February 1939 formed a concession made to appease Franco comparable to British policy towards Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia. By using different concepts of appeasement as an analytical framework, the thesis shows how appeasement policies can alter power dynamics in diplomatic relationships to the advantage of the weaker state and how that state can use this to its own advantage. In this regard, the thesis contributes to our understanding of how appeasement polices function and evolve but it also provides a more dynamic analysis of Anglo-Spanish relations than previous studies. Indeed, it focuses not only on how British and Spanish foreign policies changed over time, but also the influence which they had on each other. It concludes that we should consider Franco, like Hitler and Mussolini, as a beneficiary of appeasement who intuitively understood how to use this policy to his advantage.