Originally published in English in 1929, this second volume of the German Diplomatic Documents covers a much shorter period: 1890–1898. During this period there was no war or revolution in Europe, but the sphere of German and indeed European politics became enlarged. The documents in this volume deal with questions raised by diverse regions such as Armenia, Morocco, Tunisia, Tripoli, South Africa, Crete and Cuba. The papers here reissued show that colonial expansion is a recognised part of the official German programme. As with the first volume, the policy exhibited in the despatches of this volume are governed almost exclusively by the ultimate idea of war.

E. T. S. Dugdale (1876–1964) chose and translated these four volumes of selections from the stupendously large collection of diplomatic documents held in Berlin after the First World War. Dugdale was a keen shot, an academic, a pipe-smoking stamp-collector, and an ardent admirer of Dickens, who for a time made the translation of German texts his métier. On leaving Balliol, he had hoped to join the British Foreign Office; and to that end in the late 1890s spent two years in Germany perfecting his grasp of German – an experience which admirably qualified him for the more literary occupation. In the event, having married in 1902, he instead became an underwriter at Lloyds, and ended the War, wounded, as a captain in the Leicester Yeomanry. The four volumes of Diplomatic Documents were Dugdale’s chefs d’œuvre. The very many and generous contemporary reviews of these are as uniformly struck by their historical importance as by the skill of their presentation and choice.