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Foreign Policy - Early Victorian - 1814-1856

From 1815 to 1854 — a period of nearly forty years — the memory of the French Revolution War had sufficed to keep the Peace, though not without troubles with which the Great Powers had to deal as best they might. The independence of Greece being achieved, and Turkey having subsided into conformity with the general policy of Europe, the Eastern Question was more or less settled for a time; and the subject Christian nations were familiarised with the prospect of gradual enfranchisement, with or without the preservation of Turkish suzerainty.

When Europe was invaded by the aggressive enthusiasm of the Republican French, and then conquered by the genius of Napoleon, the time had come to do one of two things—either to relinquish what previous generations had established, with the certainty of having after all to fight at last on British shores, or else to do precisely what was done—engage in the struggle and fight to the last. There was no middle course. It had not escaped the observation of statesmen that Great Britain could no longer depend on the cultivation of her soil, or on the exchange of her produce with her colonies, but must support herself by her foreign commerce, extending over every part of the world. The issue could not be evaded. The whole past history of the nation, as well as its growing necessities, demanded the course it took, and it is difficult to see what considerable step was really wrong in the entire series of transactions. As the Empire was gained, so must it be defended.

At the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, the greatest struggle in which she had ever been engaged, British foreign policy was exactly consistent with the whole of her previous Foreign Policy. What she now contended for and carried may be described in simple words long familiar: the safety of her shores, her commerce, and her dependencies, the balance of European States, the concert of the European Powers. The last, indeed, had been a policy of more recent date than the rest; but some glimmerings of the principle are to be found in the time of Elizabeth, and when Europe gradually emerged from the barbaric turbulence of the Religious Wars, it found its most definite expression in the diplomacy of Great Britain. She had also proved in these struggles her perfect comprehension of the fundamental political truth, that the nation which is not ready at a great crisis to make every sacrifice demanded by the occasion is doomed to the loss of its influence, and then of its independence.

On the surface of the Napoleonic Wars, the eye beholds a vast efflux and reflux of armies, whose fate is decided less by the puny efforts of man than by the resistless powers of nature. But the trained imagination sees far more. It beholds the westward undertow of the Peninsular War, the weakening effect of the British naval blockade on all parts of Napoleon's empire and the thwarting of his attempts to capture Riga. It notes the efforts of British diplomacy to disengage Russia from the troublesome hostilities on her flanks and to convert Sweden and Turkey into Allies. Further, it recalls the unswerving efforts of Pitt, Grenville, Hawkesbury, Canning, Wellesley and Castlereagh to resist the territorial predominance of the French Revolution and of its heir, Napoleon. Those efforts were often unskilful, diffuse and wasteful. Their plans of European reconstruction were, also, in large measure artificial; for, in general, they were prompted by military considerations, and often erred in neglecting the interests of the peoples concerned. Yet Great Britain's Foreign Policy was honest and disinterested, when compared with that of her great antagonist and of her Allies.

The armies which had been combating one another for more than twenty years could only, in the existing state of Europe, be wielded by sovereigns, and those of the old absolute type. Of course these sovereigns and their advisers considered the questions which arose at the Peace mainly from a military point of view. On the other hand, the peoples of the different States, though scarcely represented in the various Governments, beheld themselves delivered from one tyranny only to fall under the rule of another, and had as yet no way of remedy except by tumultuous and irregular risings.

To support despotic governments by force against constitutional parties in various States appeared to the Allies just and charitable, if not peaceful; and it soon became plain that another spirit, the spirit of aggrandisement, which had been peremptorily checked at Paris and Vienna, was incorporated with this policy, France, or rather the Bourbon family, was, when left to itself, on the side of the Holy Alliance, and the problems thus presented to British ministers were exceedingly troublesome and inconvenient. Lord Castlereagh had dissatisfied the British public by failing to offer any efficient resistance to what was so profoundly repugnant to their ideas. And as the British people were clamouring for liberal reforms which had been too long withheld, and indeed impracticable during the war, the feeling towards these absolute Powers almost entirely changed. The friendly enthusiasm with which the Czar and the King of Prussia had been received when they visited England in 1814 was succeeded by dislike and distrust.

During the subsidence of the dangerous elements which had been stirred to fury for a period of more than twenty years, no rash experiments were to be made. It was the business of the nation which had taken the lead in the stress of the storm to adopt a system of policy which might utilise for the benefit of mankind all that had been gained, and at the same time to impede, if it was not possible to prevent, a recurrence of the dreadful experience through which Europe had passed. This was not to be effected by simply declining to take notice of the interference of the Great Powers in concert with which the settlement had been made. The machine would not work without being cleaned from time to time, but it was not to be taken to pieces, with everything to begin again. It was to be a policy of authoritative influence, with war in the background as the last resort, but only as the last resort. The authoritative influence, the counter-interferences, if such should be necessary, were to be regulated on the principles of popular freedom and self-government, under the checks and balances of recognised constitutions. Progress and security could only be maintained by a middle course between despotic authority and anarchical revolution.

Paimerston became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under the Reform Ministry of Lord Grey in 1830, and a new era for Great Britain, both at home and abroad, may be said to have begun at this time, under the new king, William IV. The sailor-king was favorable to the new and prevailing opinions, though alarmed lest they should take the form of revolution,—not, in short, a Radical, a term which came into use about this time, but a Whig. Paimerston had been the friend of Canning and his fellow-worker. His foreign policy was substantially the same, but he went much farther, and deliberately set himself to work in favor of the Liberal cause.

During the years 1830-1850, Great Britain, chiefly by means of diplomacy, played an important part in foreign affairs, her purpose being to preserve the peace of Europe, which had lasted since 1815. With the other-powers, she aided in settling dynastic difficulties in, Spain and Portugal, and in compelling a revolting Egyptian pasha, Mehemet Ali, to withdraw an attempt to break up the Ottoman emgire. On two occasions she avoided difficulties with France which, for a time, seemed to threaten their peaceful relations. She made two boundary treaties with the United States, one settling the Maine boundary in 1842, the other the northwestern or Oregon frontier in 1846; and, in 1850, signed a treaty, known as the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, dealing with the construction of a ship canal across Central America.

In the year 1848, a new revolution broke out in France, which ended in the abdication of Louis Philippe and the establishment of the second French republic. The success of this revolution roused the people of Italy, Austria, Prussia, and the lesser German states to make one more effort to win constitutions, and to obtain for themselves a share in government. Great Britain was not seriously affected by this widespread and at first largely successful movement. Only the Chartists and the Irish renewed their agitations. After the revolution of 1848-1849 had been suppressed by force of arms, Great Britain took part in certain of the diplomatic conferences that followed. One notable outcome of these negotiations was the arrangement made in London, in 1850 and 1852, whereby Great Britain, France, and Russia guaranteed the integrity, and settled the royal succession, of Denmark, which had been threatened by the revolt of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.

The English had killed one king, banished another, and reduced their successors to political impotence, because they would have none of the laws not made by themselves and for themselves. They gave what they call their "moral support," in turn, to every revolution in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, while as travellers in all these countries they prided themselves upon resenting and resisting every law, order, or ordinance which happened to conflict in the slightest degree with their least convenience. So some said that if law abidingness was to be preached daily, it ought to be by some other evangelist than the English people, and from some other pulpit than the English press.

Mather Arnold later wrote : "Did any one ever hear of strong sense and sturdy morality being thrust down other people's throats in this fashion? Might not these divine English gifts, and the English language in which they are preached, have a better chance of making their way among the poor .... heathen, if the English apostle delivered his message a little more agreeably?"