Following on from Jeremy Black?s previous studies on eighteenth-century foreign policy Politics and Foreign Policy under George and The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, this new book covers the period from the end of the Anglo-French alliance in 1731 to the declaration of war in 1744. The book draws upon a range of foreign and domestic sources, making particular use of foreign diplomatic records, in order to illuminate the complex and often opaque workings of the British state at a turbulent period of European history.