Papers of Queen Victoria on Foreign Affairs, Part 5. France and Belgium, 1848-1900

Queen Victoria exerted a great deal more influence on the development of Britain's foreign policy than any British monarch since. The files here reproduced from the Royal Archives reflect her active role in foreign affairs by including the principal papers of state forwarded to the queen, her related correspondence with her ministers, and correspondence with other European sovereigns and members of their families. Numbering over 81,000 manuscript pages, this unique source reflects as no other the queen's view of her role in the constitutional monarchy. The collection also includes reports and memoranda that were attached to correspondence for the queen's information. These documents contain statistics, eyewitness accounts, and intelligence reports from Foreign Office officials stationed throughout the continent, and they will add depth and clarity to any study of 19th-century Europe. Among the topics covered in Part 5 are the June insurrection, the founding of the Second Republic, and the election of Louis Napoleon, 1848; his coup and the Second Empire, 1851-1852; the Anglo-French commercial treaty, 1860; Franco-Belgian relations, 1867-1870; and the Paris Commune, 1871.