Britain was often a valued Habsburg ally and source of money, but it was also a mischievous outsider whose obsession with what it saw as the ‘balance of power’ tended to mean a manipulation of short-term allies to ensure a Europe mutually weakened in ways which allowed Britain to get on with its own imperial projects undisturbed by any would-be European hegemon. So the rather exciting British story in the eighteenth century tends to be contrasted with the sheer, stultifying inconclusiveness of European fighting – an inconclusiveness that Britain itself encouraged.
