Charting the evolution of Britain's leading role in the formation of NATO, the book provides a balanced assessment of British foreign and defence policies as the Cold War gathered momentum and a new system of European security was forged in the aftermath of World War II. The author argues that, despite the obvious differences between the periods, there are important lessons to be learned from post-war diplomacy by today's statesmen as they struggle to build another system of European security in the post-Cold War era. The book is based on a wide range of British, American and Canadian archives. Other published works by the author include "British Defence Policy in a Changing World", "Soviet Strategy" (with G. Segal), "Alternative Approaches to British Defence Policy", "Anglo-American Defence Relations 1939-84", "Contemporary Strategy Vols I and II" (with G. Segal, J. Garnett and P. Williams), "Nuclear War and Nuclear Peace" (with G. Segal, E. Moreton and L. Freedman), "Britain, NATO and Nuclear Weapons" (with K. Booth), "British Defence Policy: Striking the Right Balance", "Makers of Nuclear Strategy" (with J. Garnett) and "Dilemmas of World Politics" (with N. Rengger).

Taming the Imperial Imagination marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan relations. Martin J. Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state. This knowledge informed policy choices and cast Afghanistan in a separate legal and normative universe. Beginning with the disorganised exploits of nineteenth-century explorers and ending with the cold strategic logic of the militarised 'scientific frontier', this book tracks the nineteenth-century origins of contemporary policy 'expertise' and the forms of knowledge that inform interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.

The Diplomacy of Pragmatism charts the evolution of Britain's distinctive and leading role in the formation of NATO. Based on a wide range of British, American and Canadian archives the book provides a balanced assessment of British foreign and defence policies as the Cold War gathered momentum and a new system of European security was forged in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Taming the Imperial Imagination marks a novel intervention into the debate on empire and international relations, and offers a new perspective on nineteenth-century Anglo-Afghan relations. Martin J. Bayly shows how, throughout the nineteenth century, the British Empire in India sought to understand and control its peripheries through the use of colonial knowledge. Addressing the fundamental question of what Afghanistan itself meant to the British at the time, he draws on extensive archival research to show how knowledge of Afghanistan was built, refined and warped by an evolving colonial state. This knowledge informed policy choices and cast Afghanistan in a separate legal and normative universe. Beginning with the disorganised exploits of nineteenth-century explorers and ending with the cold strategic logic of the militarised 'scientific frontier', this book tracks the nineteenth-century origins of contemporary policy 'expertise' and the forms of knowledge that inform interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today.