In 1938, during the Munich (Czech) Crisis, then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain expressed his distaste for making war preparations over "a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing."
That remark seems strange for just before the dawn of the jet age, during an era when Britain had a global empire, because the distance between London and Prague was a little over 600 miles. For comparison, the distances between London and capitals of former colonies were 3000 miles for Ottawa, 3600 miles for Washington, and 10,000 miles for Canberra.
Perhaps a more plausible explanation was the reference to "foreign" German and Czech people. But that doesn't seem to make sense, given that the British Royal Family was largely of German origin, including Queen Victoria's Prince Albert, and Mary of Teck, wife of King George V.
Perhaps I'm taking the phrase out of context, but in the 19th century, the Know Nothings were a group of anti "foreign" (immigrant) Americans, who professed to "know nothing" about their positions.
Otherwise, why would Chamberlain refer to Germans and Czechs as "far away" peoples of whom his contemporaries would know nothing? Did most of them actually feel that way, or was that sentiment more or less particular to Chamberlain? Put another way, was he addressing a large British contingent with a quasi-American "know nothing" mentality (Lady Astor comes to mind.)
Apparently, David Lloyd George opined that "Mr Chamberlain views everything through the wrong end of a municipal drain-pipe."