Britain and Foreign Affairs 1815-1885

Europe and Overseas

John Lowe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134777808
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

This pamphlet examines British foreign policy from Castlereagh to Disraeli. Focusing on Britain's relations with other European and non-European powers such as America, Afghanistan, South Africa and Egypt, this pamphlet examines the roles of Canning, Palmerston, and Gladstone amongst others. The author discusses British attitudes to empire, and analyses socio-economic, military and political factors as they influenced foreign affairs.

1
The making of British foreign policy, 1815–85

Introduction

The portrayal of the English as ‘a nation of sea-farers' was an illusion, but the mere fact that Britain is an island situated at the edge of the continent of Europe has had a profound influence on her foreign policy. At its simplest, it meant that Britain, unlike her neighbours, seemed to have a choice—to become actively involved in the affairs of the continent or to adopt a posture of ‘isolation' from Europe. The latter was not always a genuine choice. In the reign of the Hanoverian kings from 1714 to 1837 the defence of the royal homeland was an important issue. But Hanover apart, allowing Louis XIV or Napoleon to dominate most of Europe could seriously damage British interests. To meet the threat, Britain contributed large armies under the Duke of Marlborough and later, Wellington. The fact that both French monarchs made plans to invade England (in 1692 and 1805) highlights the importance of her island situation to her security. ‘Having the sea for wall' a Tudor statesman put it, anticipating Shakespeare's verse:

This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; … This precious stone set in the silver sea Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands.

Richard II, Act II, Scene I

The sea proved a better defence against French armies than the barrier fortresses of the Netherlands, providing, of course, that the navy was strong and kept in a seaworthy state—no mean task with wooden sailing ships.

Financing a powerful fleet (such as the 120 ships of the line in the 1750s) helped to push up the national debt from £14 million (in 1700) to £700 millions in 1815. The burden, however, was made easier by the growth of overseas trade, whose protection was one of the navy's major tasks. Hence the insistence in the 1750s that ‘trade and maritime force depend upon each other'. If, in some of the seven Anglo-French wars between 1689 and 1815, Europe was the main theatre of war, in others colonial and commercial objectives were more prominent. This is a reminder that well before the Industrial Revolution, Britain traded with the American colonies, the West Indies, West Africa and India, as well as Europe. Regulating this trade was designed to create a trade surplus—‘the riches which are the true resources of this country depend upon its commerce' (8, p. 146). These ‘riches' were the the essential sinews of war, not only in the competition for empire but also for hiring mercenaries or for subsidies to allies on the continent.

The interdependence of overseas and European issues was recognised by a French statesman in the 1760s when he said: ‘In the present state of Europe it is colonies, trade and in consequence sea power, which must determine the balance of power upon the continent.' Priorities, or perceptions, could change, of course. It may have been the further growth of Britain's overseas trade and commitments that led her foreign secretaries a century later to assert that British interests were not involved in continental conflicts.

Continuity and change

From 1815 to 1865 continuity is a more dominant theme in British foreign policy than change. Thereafter, at least for the next two decades, policy changes seem to occur quite frequently. To some extent, of course, continuity is a matter of emphasis, a question of perspective, but in this case, personalities also played a part. The long ‘Palmerstonian age' from 1830 to 1865 was followed by the era of Gladstone and Disraeli, whose views on foreign affairs had little in common.

Palmerston asserted in 1835 that ‘England's interests continue the same let who will be in office.' It is far from certain that he would have made such a comment thirty years later, having witnessed Lord Aberdeen's markedly different perception of Britain's interests, as well as chafing at his view of how best to promote or defend them.

In defining her relations with other states, Britain's foreign secretaries naturally gave prominence to questions of security and strategy. Even so, relations could be affected by harmful restrictions on British trade. Foreign secretaries rarely seemed to expound a coherent set of ideas that might represent the principles on which British foreign policy was conducted. However, a few basic principles can be deduced which were valid for much of the nineteenth century: the desire for peace; the expansion of world trade; concern over the ‘neutrality' of the Belgian coastline; and resistance to the domination of the continent by a single power (1).

The latter was usually the objective behind concern for the maintenance of the balance of power, which seems to have been a widely accepted if ill-defined concept for much of the nineteenth century. Until the 1860s, no major change in attitudes towards it took place, but the change then affected both parties more or less simultaneously. In 1814–15, Castlereagh's efforts to set limits to Russia's territorial gains, while balancing Austrian gains in Italy against Prussia's in Germany, contributed to the creation of that ‘just equilibrium' which was conducive to stability in Europe. Canning's unease at the grouping of the Holy Alliance powers after 1820 was later shared by Palmerston, who claimed to have created a ‘counterpoise' to it by an alliance of four western states in 1834. This East-West divide implied an ideological aspect to the balance of power but, in practice, the division was far from rigid. Being ‘a system of practical mediation', as Palmerston called it, one of its virtues was flexibility, so its denigration in the 1860s by Cobden as a ‘foul idol' was unjust. The Liberal Alliance of Britain and France from 1830 to 1846 was a shaky affair indeed, and ironically it was the Tories (Peel and Aberdeen) who fostered the entente cordiale more than Palmerston. In 1848 when the balance of power seemed threatened by the shock waves of revolution, spreading from Paris throughout Europe, Britain (as well as Russia) seemed to give priority to the restoration of stability (2A).

The main upset to the balance of power followed Russia's defeat in the Crimean war in 1856 and her self-imposed withdrawal from an active role in European affairs. Napoleon III's attempt to capitalize on this by trying to create a French diplomatic ascendancy in Europe caused some alarm to Britain's politicians (Palmerston excepted) but neither of the parties showed much concern at Bismarck's much greater challenge to the status quo in the late 1860s. On the other hand in 1871 the Conservative leader, Disraeli, was quick to grasp that the existing balance of power had been entirely destroyed by Prussia. The creation of a powerful military state in the centre of Europe produced a different response from the Liberal and Conservative leaders. Whereas Gladstone placed exaggerated hopes on international cooperation, through the Concert of Europe, the Conservatives came to rely on trying to win Germany's goodwill to resist threats to British interests.

‘Non-intervention' was also an imprecise concept but its virtues were proclaimed in speeches in the House of Commons, when for example, Tories disapproved of aid being given to liberal regimes abroad. It also meant non-interference in the internal affairs of other states, but even this ideal was not always honoured.
Meddling in the politics of the Iberian peninsula for several decades did not prevent British ministers from paying lip service to the concept of non-intervention before 1855 (2D, pp. 54–9). In the 1860s it came to mean not intervening in European affairs. Gladstone's desire to avoid ‘needless and entangling engagements' was quite restrained compared to most of the ‘Euro-sceptic' utterances of the post 1865 period, which recoiled from the ‘sanguinary muddle of Continental diplomacy' or dangerous obligations to ‘Great military and despotic powers'. In 1875 the Earl of Derby (formerly Lord Stanley), Disraeli's foreign secretary, claimed that ‘the policy of non-intervention in general in continental disputes is the one which finds most favour with the people of this country' (29). The notion that Britain should remain aloof from European affairs certainly seems more evident in the 1860s than in previous decades. This was in part an understandable reaction to the sense of military failure in the Crimean war of 1854–6, the perceived futility of which was such, The Times asserted even as late as 1861, that ‘Never was so great an effort made for so worthless an object.' It also stemmed from a recognition of Britain's powerlessness when large armies were on the march.

The Concert of Europe was another imprecise ideal that influenced some British foreign secretaries in the nineteenth century. In fact, despite the assertion by Muriel Chamberlain that ‘Britain's role in the settlement of European affairs was often peripheral' in the period 1815 to 1871, Britain played an active role in European affairs during most of the forty years after Waterloo (12, p. 7). Even Canning, who refused to work within the Congress System, cooperated with France and Russia over the Greek revolt. Here again the Crimean war was a watershed, influencing Russia's policy as well as Britain's and reinforcing an existing trend towards a global rather than a European outlook.

Attitudes to empire

The issue of continuity in British imperial policy is in some respects linked to the problem of defining the meaning of imperialism. In 1815 the British Empire consisted of a disparate collection of territories, controlled from London, including Canada, parts of ‘Australia', India, the Cape, and numerous islands in the West Indies. In the following decades, however, Britain's influence was extended well beyond this ‘formal' empire by the growth of her trade throughout the world, creating what has been called ‘informal empire' or ‘creeping colonialism'.

Changing attitudes to empire have become difficult to pinpoint with confidence as standard interpretations come to be modified in the light of new evidence or approaches. The traditional view, elaborated in the works of Bodelson and Schuyler in the 1920s, held that ‘anti-imperialism' was a widespread sentiment among political leaders and the public in the middle years of the century.
In the 1870s or 1880s, by contrast, it was replaced by the ‘new imperialism' of territorial annexations, especially in Africa (7, 6).

Anti-imperialism had a logic to it. The action of the American colonists in throwing off their allegiance to the crown in 1776, led to the conviction that colonies would inevitably seek independence from Britain as they matured. The revolt of the Spanish colonists in South America in the 1820s also seemed to confirm Britain's own experience. This disillusionment with colonies on political grounds was reinforced by the discovery that trade between America and Britain actually increased after the colonists gained their independence in 1782. This made a nonsense of the whole system of regulating colonial trade in the interests of the mother country. Experience therefore seemed to prove Adam Smith right. In his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, he had attacked the restrictive legislation (such as the Navigation Acts) of the ‘Old Colonial System' in favour of the principle of Free Trade, which finally triumphed in Britain with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. For some decades before this, however, colonies seemingly continued to be regarded as a useful asset.

In mid-Victorian times, by contrast, colonies came to be seen as financial liabilities—‘millstones around our necks'. Even the smaller colonies like New Zealand were deemed ‘wretched burdens which in an evil hour we assumed', since the costs of their administration (and defence) fell on Britain. Hence talk of the possible ‘separation' of the colonies from Britain, especially by doctrinaire spokesmen of the Manchester School of laissez-faire economics. In 1865, a Select Committee Report looked forward to ‘our ultimate withdrawal' from the coast of West Africa. The years 1868 to 1870 supposedly saw ‘the climax of anti-imperialism'.

The few colonial enthusiasts of the period were a small band of Radicals such as Lord Durham (famous for his Report on Canada in 1839) and Gibbon Wakefield, who advocated ‘systematic colonization' of Australia and New Zealand. It seems that emigration contributed to a change of attitude towards colonies of white settlement, which were readily granted self-government in one form or another in the 1850s. Another factor was the growth of the economies of the larger colonies and the expansion of trade with India, so that some parts of the empire came to be more highly regarded in time. Distinctive party political attitudes to the colonies are not very much in evidence. Some prominent Whigs, including the third Earl Grey and Lord John Russell, were well disposed towards them, partly on the grounds of prestige and power politics, but Palmerston showed little interest in the empire, apart from India.

In the 1880s the idea of empire seems to have caught the popular imagination. The daring deeds of explorers and missionaries in opening up the so-called ‘Dark Continent' may have had some influence, together with the growth of colonial and commercial rivalry among the great powers. If Disraeli made imperialism almost the preserve of the Conservative party, Gladstone's well known anti-imperialist stance, influenced by the expense and immorality of colonial wars, seems to stand in contrast to it.

The fact that territorial acquisitions, especially in Africa, were a feature of the ‘new imperialism' of the 1880s appears to offer a contrast with the idea, prevalent in mid-Victorian times, of relinquishing colonies. But, as many historians have pointed out, far from giving up colonies, governments of the earlier period made numerous additions to the British Empire, such as Singapore, Aden, Hong Kong, and Lagos, as well as large parts of India.

The historical debate over continuity or discontinuity in British imperial policy and in public attitudes to empire in the course of the nineteenth century has become ever more complex. This is partly because the evidence itself is quite conflicting and the differing interpretations of it almost endless.

One of the most controversial suggestions of the last forty years has been the concept of ‘the imperialism of free trade', summed up as ‘trade with informal control if possible; trade with rule where necessary'. Robinson and Gallagher used this concept to explain the growth of ‘informal' empire, which supposedly embraced independent states such as Argentina, said to be in an unequal and dependent (and therefore imperialistic?) relationship with Britain (7, p. 24).

The case for continuity does not rest solely on Robinson and Gallagher's 1953 thesis (favoured by Cain and Hopkins). More recently, other historians such as Eldridge have presented evidence that undermines part of the case for discontinuity. This consists partly of disavowals of the alleged anti-imperial attitude of the mid-Victorian period and partly of evidence of a widespread consensus that Providence lay behind the expansion of the British Empire. For example, the Radical J.A.Roebuck insisted in 1849 that ‘The people of this country have never acquiesced in the opinion that our colonies are useless…', even if they were unsure why colonies served a useful purpose.

That an ingrained pride in empire (parts of which dated back to 1763 or earlier) persisted through the nineteenth century seems perfectly credible. Even Gladstone conceded in 1878 that ‘the sentiment of empire may be called innate in every Briton'. Planting ‘the seeds of freedom, civilization, and Christianity', as Huskisson put it in 1828, made the authority of the British Crown ‘the most powerful instrument under Providence, of maintaining peace and order' in many regions of the world, in the view of Earl Grey in 1853. Similar sentiments can be found in the comments of prominent men in the 1860s and 1870s and presumably inspired the remark by Gladstone in 1881 that ‘while we are opposed to imperialism, we are devoted to empire'.

The British Empire was seemingly more loved by Britons than its detractors allow. It meant more than just the profits of trade and investment. It involved duties and obligations, a sense of mission or trusteeship, and for that reason, Eldridge concludes, the empire received the almost universal support of the Victorian governing class. Even Cain and Hopkins suggest that the ‘imperial mission was the export version of the gentlemanly order' and see the empire as ‘a superb arena for gentlemanly endeavour' (5, p. 34).

Socio-economic factors

By mid-century Britain had become ‘the great Emporium of the commerce of the World' according to Cain and Hopkins.
However, the link between politics and trade is not as clear-cut as might be expected. For one thing, Middleton asserts that ‘few decisions in foreign policy reflected merely trading interests' which, together with manufacturing interests, received only ‘an occasional fleeting glance'. It may well be the case that in this period ‘Industrialists were not at the centre of economic policy making,' as Cain and Hopkins maintain, but Middleton's views appear to underplay the vital importance of trade and finance to the growth of British power and global influence, after 1850 at least. Porter's belief that Britain's foreign policy from the 1850s onwards was firmly rooted in her economic situation seems more acceptable, but he also admits that it was only very rarely that the Foreign Office did anything more positive than remedy injustice to assist the growth of British commerce (32, 5, 6, 9).

The emphasis on ‘gentlemanly capitalism', (Cain and Hopkins's description) as a major factor in Britain's rise to pre-eminence, offers a new approach. They argue that the key agencies in the growth of the British economy were not so much manufacturers as trading companies, financiers (especially merchant bankers), and professional agencies such as insurance firms and lawyers concentrated in the City, whose links with the personnel of politics and government were likely to be much closer. With the Bank of England playing an intermediary role between politicians, officials and financiers, the defence of Britain's overseas trade and other legitimate commercial activities was a perfectly proper concern of ministers. Indeed, Palmerston asserted that ‘It is the business of government to open and secure the roads for the merchant.' In 1860 he made the point even more bluntly when he wrote: ‘trade ought not to be enforced by cannon balls, but…trade cannot flourish without security'. What ministers recoiled from was playing the role of ‘sheriff's officer', as Lord Salisbury termed it, when greedy private or corporate investors got their fingers burnt in questionable financial operations overseas.

British capital was being exported at the rate of £30 million a year as early as 1850, rising to £75 million by 1875, which yielded dividends of £50 million. By about 1860 Britain was responsible for 40 per cent of the trade in manufactured goods, producing over half the world's supply of coal, iron and steel, and cotton cloth. Hence Kennedy's suggestion that Britain was a different sort of power from her rivals in Europe. By 1850, for example, the whole of the continent was less industrial than Britain alone, whose economy went on expanding for a further twenty years.
This suggests she was not just the ‘warehouse' of the world, as Cain and Hopkins assert, but the ‘workshop' as well (8).

Because the value of the pound was linked to a fixed quantity of gold (the gold standard) for which it could be exchanged on demand (convertibility) sterling became a world currency (long before the days of American Express). This made London the centre of the world's banking and insurance system, controlling shipping lines that regulated over one third of the world's merchant marine. Hence the assertion by Cain and Hopkins that ‘commerce and finance were the most dynamic elements in the nation's economic thrust overseas'.

This leads them to challenge many of the conventional views about the impulses behind British imperialism. In their view, it was ‘the rapid growth of services' fostered by ‘gentlemanly capitalism'

that explains ‘the peculiar nature of British overseas expansion' (5, p. 12). This makes for a greater focus on colonies of white settlement, where British influence was strongest. It also suggests that the territorial acquisitions of the later nineteenth century (such as in Africa) were related to the continuing growth and success of gentlemanly capitalism, rather than to the failure and decline of manufacturing industry. The usual vie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• 1: The making of British foreign policy, 1815–85
• 2: Castlereagh and Canning, 1815–27
• 3: The Palmerstonian age, 1830–65
• 4: The Gladstone-Disraeli era, 1866–85
• 5: Conclusion
• Select bibliography*