Introduction

This chapter begins by raising questions regarding Central Europe — which countries belong to this region, and where are the dividing lines between Central and South-East Europe? Consequently, the book adopts the narrowest definition of Central Europe, and confines the geographical scope of British policy in Central Europe to the triangle of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. This reductive approach does not reflect current political definitions of Central Europe. What follows this chapter is a collection of three parallel case studies of British diplomatic history. This method has been chosen in order to demonstrate the continuously changing priorities of the Foreign Office in Central Europe. Although British experts treated Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia as a territorial unit, they regarded the late Austro–Hungarian Empire as reminiscence that should be better forgotten.