Editing History of the United Kingdom (section)

====Salisbury====
Historians agree that [[Lord Salisbury]] as foreign minister and prime minister in the late 19th century was a strong and effective leader in foreign affairs. He had a superb grasp of the issues, and proved:

{{Blockquote|a patient, pragmatic practitioner, with a keen understanding of Britain's historic interests....He oversaw the partition of Africa, the emergence of Germany and the United States as imperial powers, and the transfer of British attention from the Dardanelles to Suez without provoking a serious confrontation of the great powers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ellenberger |first=Nancy W. |title=Salisbury |date=2003 |work=Reader's Guide to British History |editor-last=Loades |editor-first=David |volume=2 |page=1154}}</ref>}}

Conservative Prime Minister [[Lord Salisbury]] was a "talented leader who was an icon of traditional, aristocratic conservatism".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Steele |first=David |title=Lord Salisbury: A Political Biography |date=2001 |isbn=978-0-20-350014-9 |page=383 |author-link=David Steele (historian)}}</ref> Salisbury was "a great foreign minister, [but] essentially negative, indeed reactionary in home affairs".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Blake |first=Robert |title=The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill |date=1970 |isbn=978-0-41-327200-3 |page=132 |publisher=Eyre & Spottiswoode |author-link=Robert Blake, Baron Blake}}.</ref> Another historian's estimate is more favourable; he portrays Salisbury as a leader who "held back the popular tide for twenty years."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Marsh |first=Peter T. |title=The Discipline of Popular Government: Lord Salisbury's Domestic Statecraft, 1881–1902 |date=1978 |isbn=978-0-39-100874-8 |page=326|publisher=Harvester Press }}</ref> "[I]nto the 'progressive' strain of modern Conservatism he simply will not fit."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Smith |first=Paul |title=Lord Salisbury on Politics. A Selection from his Articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860–1883 |date=1972 |isbn=978-0-52-108386-7 |page=1 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |author-link=Paul Smith (historian)}}</ref> One historian pointed to "the narrow cynicism of Salisbury".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Gladstone Diaries |date=1990 |editor-last=Matthew |editor-first=H.C.G. |editor-link=Colin Matthew |volume=X: January 1881 – June 1883 |pages=cxxxix–cxl}}</ref> One admirer of Salisbury agrees that Salisbury found the democracy born of the 1867 and 1884 [[Reform Acts]] as "perhaps less objectionable than he had expected—succeeding, through his public persona, in mitigating some part of its nastiness."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cowling |first=Maurice |title=Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England |date=1980 |isbn=0-521-23289-9 |volume=I |page=387 |author-link=Maurice Cowling}}</ref>