Trade, Empire and British Foreign Policy, 1689-1815

Politics of a Commercial State

Jeremy Black

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134221790
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This new volume examines the influence of trade and empire from 1689 to 1815, a crucial period for British foreign policy and state-building.Jeremy Black, a leading expert on British foreign policy, draws on the wide range of archival material, as well as other sources, in order to ask how far, and through what processes and to what ends, foreign p

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203964507-1

Every man who has the honour to be a representative in Parliament of any part of this nation ought to make it his business to understand the theory of trade.

A Second Letter from a Hawker and Pedlar in the Country to a Member of Parliament (London, 1731), p. 6

The extent to which foreign policy served commercial and imperial goals is of major interest today, as the role of government policy and support in the rise of British power, and, more generally, the reasons for this rise are subjects of academic consideration. This aspect of foreign policy was also of interest to contemporaries, as the issue was rarely far from political contention. Foreign policy indeed was one of the most important aspects of state activity. Foreign policy was of concern to contemporaries, not simply because of its consequences, which ranged from national independence, in the face of repeated invasion attempts, to the price of goods affected by commercial competition, but also because it was thought to reveal the operations of the political system and what were believed to be the key factors influencing national policy and capability. In part, this was because foreign policy was also significant as the forcing house of notions of national interest and the prime sphere for their contest. The debate over policy led to the articulation of ideas, and helped associate them with political groups, although that association, in turn, made the analysis and articulation of concepts of national interest far more complex.

For contemporaries, it was important to ask how far, through what processes, and to what ends, foreign policy served commercial and imperial goals, and these are also significant questions today. It is particularly instructive to consider the conceptualisations of these goals in terms both of international competition and the views of domestic society, and also how the contours and contents of these conceptualisations altered during this period. Trade and empire therefore served both as goals and as metaphors for wider anxieties and aspirations, in what were seen as an intensely competitive international system and a fast-changing domestic society and culture. The understanding of what this meant to contemporaries is important, as ‘realist’ issues were embedded within processes of policy formulation and discussion that were affected by the wider cultural context, broadly defined.

In particular, policy formulation needs to be considered in terms of the contested field of what is now known as strategic culture. This area falls within the current interest in the emergence of a public sphere, or spheres, during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Indeed, groups and interests mentioned in this book, such as mercantile lobbies and the press, have been the subject of research from this perspective. This study contributes to the discussion of their importance, and thus to an understanding of the ways in which strategic culture was moulded.

In terms of perception, it is also instructive to consider how the relationships between trade, empire and foreign policy were perceived abroad, and how this contributed to an analysis of Britain as a distinctive state. As such, it is an important facet of the discussion about British exceptionalism which is so important to the evaluation of national history. This, however, also brings in another aspect of the realist dimension, as such apparent exceptionalism has to be considered alongside the situation in other countries. This was particularly the case with France. The French empire grew rapidly at the time under review and became Britain’s main competitor, clearly replacing the United Provinces (Netherlands), with which England had fought three wars in 1652–74. Traditional interpretations stress the French reliance on state-controlled colonial expansion, in contrast to British commercially driven laissez-faire. This is an approach conducive to eighteenth-century notions of British exceptionalism, and the conclusions drawn from them, but it is a comparison that has come under review recently and that benefits from re-examination.

At the same time, amidst the multiple complexities of comparing French and British economic differences, ¹ it can be argued that the French state had to take a greater role because economic circumstances, social structures and social ethos were less favourable to consumer-driven economic growth than in Britain. ² French officials indeed were convinced that, thanks to agents, such as the industrial inspectorate created in 1669 and answerable to the Council of Commerce, they had more control over their commercial world than their British counterparts. Gerard de Rayneval, a key official in the French Foreign Office, who had served as envoy in London in 1782–3, talking to William Eden, the British commercial negotiator with France and a longserving MP, in 1786, ‘allowed that France had facilities in such a business which we had not; and that we were more bound to advert to prejudices; to adopt certain managements’. Two years later, William Pitt the Younger, the First Lord of the Treasury, noted that, whereas in France, the king could readily establish commercial regulations, in Britain it was necessary to rely on Parliamentary sanction. ³ At the same time, there was also a sense that France only wielded so much control. In 1772, the British ministry displayed restraint in tackling what they regarded as illicit French trade in Gambia and, the following year, Emmanuel-Armand, Duke d’Aiguillon, the French foreign minister, assured William, Fourth Earl of Rochford, the British envoy, that French traders to Africa had been ordered not to act contrary to treaty,

that if these people, who traded entirely upon their own bottom, did anything contrary to treaty, if they came among us, and interfered with our trade, we might seize them and punish them as we pleased, and might be very sure they were not supported from hence and would not be claimed. ⁴

Policy as well as perception is important. There is an understandable sense that commercial and colonial considerations ought to be important in the formulation and execution of foreign policy, and that the role of commerce, and interest in its growth and in colonial expansion, were ‘structural’ features of policy that played a significant role in decisions. However, it is by no means easy to assess the importance of these considerations. Discussion of trade provides a way not only of looking at commercial policy and lobbying, but also of considering the impact of other aspects of government and politics, and this is even more the case with imperial policy. The implications of British strategic culture for foreign policy need to be considered alongside the consequences, for both mercantile and imperial policy, of diplomatic commitments and concerns. If the latter are not seen in the round, there is a danger that the role of trade or empire will be exaggerated. Indeed, that is a characteristic of some of the literature, with its understandable tendency to argue that the subject of research was necessarily the most important factor in policy. In this book, there is no such automatic assessment. Instead, there is an approach to policy that is more multi-faceted. The analysis of chronological shifts then feeds through into an assessment of the nature of the British system.

The multi-faceted character of policy is also displayed by the problems posed by the use of evidence, most pointedly in the case of selective quotation. For example, in 1729, James, Second Lord Tyrawly, the bellicose envoy in Lisbon, who had a military background, pressed for a firm response to Portugal in a commercial dispute, arguing that naval capability ought to be employed in order not simply to settle the dispute but also to ensure a more generally satisfactory outcome. He reported that it was impracticable for Portugal

to do anything, that can prevent a squadron of the King’s [George II’s] ships from coming to an anchor at the King’s [John V of Portugal’s] palace, whenever His Majesty [George II] pleases . . . I think this business may be so turned upon the Portuguese as to be of great service to us to examine into our treaties with them . . . our treaty with them has for many years been in a manner set, and our merchants have no privileges, but such as the Portuguese please to allow them . . . the appearance of a squadron here would make them come into any terms.

Tyrawly was keen that this should be a regular occurrence and that every British squadron sent to the Mediterranean should visit Lisbon ‘for these people are not to be trusted longer than the rod is held over them’. ⁵ Thomas, Duke of Newcastle, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, in contrast, urged compromise, arguing that the importance of the Portuguese trade was accentuated by Anglo-Spanish differences, which, indeed, were then serious. ⁶ Tyrawly’s willingness to suggest force was unusual as far as relations with European states were concerned, but other envoys were happy to propose pressure through commercial intimidation. One form was by suggesting import substitution from within the British dominions. In 1728, John Snow wrote from Stockholm,

the Swedes would in all likelihood now readily comply in redressing any reasonable complaints our Court should think fit to make, they being very much terrified by a report spread about here lately of there being a project now on foot at London for importing iron from our plantations in America. ⁷

All could agree on the importance of trade in this period. It was, in effect, part of the official ideology of foreign policy, like maritime superiority and national security. This importance was the theme of ministerial speeches and of diplomatic instructions, and has been taken up by historians keen to explain the contours of foreign policy. Pro-government writers made much of ministerial care for trade, ⁸ and merchants sought such backing. Thus, the loss of 13 of the American colonies in 1775–83 was followed by requests from British merchants for the establishment of a consular system there. ⁹ And yet there were also frequent complaints by, and on behalf of, merchants about a lack of governmental support, both in general and with reference to specific issues.

This contrast is an appropriate topic for study. Several sources of difficulties in the relationship readily emerge. First, mercantile issues were frequently complex, not least because they involved disparate lobbying. Second, and related to this, successive ministries faced the difficult problem posed by the Continental commercial policies confronting the British merchants in ways that varied, especially in response to the international political situation. The protectionism and rise of trading companies seen on the Continent had a definite political edge as it reflected resentment of the British position. It was difficult in the face of such challenges to reconcile mercantile and political interests, and usually ministers put the emphasis on the latter. In part, this reflected a degree of bias against merchants, whether social or arising from a frequent disinclination to respond automatically to lobbying, but, on the whole, the key factor was that political issues were regarded as primary. At the same time, there was a tendency to try to see political and commercial issues as in harmony, as, in 1738, when peace between Denmark and Hamburg was sought for the benefit of British trade and in order to ensure the peace of Lower Saxony. ¹⁰

Furthermore, ministers and diplomats could contrast British policy with that of other states on the basis of the British government’s need to respond to commercial interests. Thus, in 1735, Walter Titley, the envoy in Copenhagen, wrote of the Austrian envoy ‘his court has little concern in trade and is very willing to oblige the Danes, but we have an interest which leads us to look further into the matter’. ¹¹ At the same time, whatever their views on the particular political culture of individual foreign states, British ministers felt that they could appeal to the commercial interests of other powers. In 1725, Newcastle drew up a draft dispatch in which he instructed the envoy in Florence to persuade the Tuscan ministers to continue to offer support, reminding them ‘of the benefits their people enjoy by their trade with us’. ¹² Yet, despite this, there was a general view that foreign powers preferred to place difficulties in the way of British trade, rather than to search for mutual advantage. In 1729, Consul Edmund Allen complained from Naples about ‘the continual vexations and oppression the British navigation and commerce receive from Custom House officers’. ¹³

As an instance of methodological problems, British neutrality in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–5) raises the wider issue of the general difficulty of assessing the role of commercial factors (or, indeed, any other individual criterion) in British policy, and it is instructive to consider the neutrality in this light. Due to the absence of any series of documents revealing governmental ideas comparable to the Mémoires et Documents of the French foreign ministry or the minutes of the Austrian Privy Council, it is difficult to substantiate contemporary, or later, claims or suggestions of influence. It is, for example, probable that British neutrality, in breach of its treaty obligations to Austria under the Second Treaty of Vienna (1731), owed at least something to a determination to preserve grain exports during a period of agrarian difficulties, fiscal problems and political uncertainty, but the evidence is only suggestive. Arable farming was badly hit by a structural disequilibrium between production and consumption that owed much to demographic stagnation and improvements in agricultural efficiency, a situation seriously exacerbated by a series of goo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Other Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Note on dates, spelling and titles
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Ideas of trade and empire
• 3 The shaping of policy
• 4 The government response
• 5 1689–1714
• 6 1714–39
• 7 1739–63
• 8 1763–83
• 9 1783–1815
• 10 Conclusions
• Selected further reading
• Index