The Voice of England in the East: Stratford Canning and Diplomacy With the Ottoman Empire by Steven Richmond

Author:Steven Richmond [Richmond, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Historical, Diplomacy, Europe, Modern, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, History, Political, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, General
ISBN: 9781780761176
Google: R7iKDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 16146340
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Published: 2013-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

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Many have interpreted Stratford’s ‘I mean force’ directive of 19 August 1827 and ‘cannon-shot’ directive of 1 September as evidence for his responsibility for the Battle of Navarino.30 Codrington himself did so during an investigation conducted by Dudley a few months after the battle.31 Canning denied such responsibility in his later memoir.32

These two directives of Stratford to Codrington in the crucial weeks before the battle are certainly important but they are also difficult to assess. This was a most complicated diplomatic and military case and any evaluation of it must take into consideration Codrington’s expression to Stratford on 16 August 1827: ‘The subject presents difficulties in whichever way we look at it, as such a business necessarily must …’ This opinion was still valid a century later and it was verified by the British military historian, J. Holland Rose, writing in 1927 for the 100th anniversary of Navarino: ‘Even now the immediate causes which produced that collision between the forces of West and East are shrouded in mystery.’ This remains true today and it is still not possible to answer definitively what Rose identified as the prime historical question of Navarino: ‘In short, was there on one side, or on both sides, a desire to let the guns speak, or did they in that tense situation “go off of themselves”?’33

While there can be no doubt that Stratford strongly advocated aggressive measures, the degree to which he influenced Codrington is not as clear as many historians have claimed. But it is entirely possible that he was largely responsible for Navarino. If he indeed was, his aggressive stance and directives can perhaps in part be explained by the tremendous pressures he faced at that time. He was after all forced to make an immediate decision completely on his own, demonstrating one of Monsieur de Callières’s dictums on the methods of the diplomat, published in 1716: ‘there are even pressing and important occasions when he is sometimes obliged to make up his mind in the field, & to enact certain démarches, without waiting for the orders of his master when he is unable to receive them in time.’34 And Stratford took this responsibility onto himself in 1827 when he was conflicted, agitated, worried and grieving.

On the one hand his sympathy with the Greek cause, his frustrations with the diplomatic stalemate, his being ‘… unwilling to leave too much to chance where so many important interests are at stake’ (as he wrote to Codrington on 3 May 1827), and his desire to achieve a great diplomatic breakthrough which would allow him to establish himself once and for all in a new career at home – all of these likely suggested to him that the military initiative should be seized and not lost. On the other hand, Stratford had to be fearful of sparking a war between the Ottomans and Russians which would run counter to British interests. Such a move could have finished off his career with his own government, especially as he had no authorisation from it to undertake such action.

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