Pax Britannica?: British Foreign Policy 1789-1914 by Muriel E. Chamberlain

Author:Muriel E. Chamberlain [Chamberlain, Muriel E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Great Britain
ISBN: 9781317870623
Google: fjagBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-09-25T01:36:16+00:00

III. A NEW AND MORE DANGEROUS WORLD

Chapter 8

THE TURNING POINT

From the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 to the death of Palmerston in 1865, Britain could reasonably be described as a ‘satiated’ power in Europe and, for the most part overseas, with no particular ambitions to pursue. The industrial revolution had given her a long lead over her potential rivals and the British wanted peace and stability in the world and the general triumph of free trade ideals. Free trade had come to assume the status almost of a gospel in Britain, where it was believed that it would ensure not only universal prosperity but also universal peace. Its virtues were argued most persuasively by the leaders of the Manchester School, Richard Cobden with his almost unanswerable logic, and John Bright, who added the emotional salt of his Quaker beliefs. Ironically, it was in the 1860s, when free trade ideals seemed to have at last triumphed in Europe, when even France was dismantling her protectionist system and had signed a free trade treaty with Britain, negotiated by Cobden himself, that the first cracks began to appear.

So far as Europe was concerned Britain had been content to uphold the Vienna balance; despite their differences on tactics, which could be considerable, that had been the basic aim of Canning and Palmerston as well as of Castlereagh and Aberdeen. The ideal rôle of the Foreign Secretary was, as Lord Salisbury later described it, ‘floating lazily down stream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boathook to avoid collisions’ (Cecil 1921: vol. 2, 130). The country to be watched, and if necessary checked, was France, although various methods could be employed, friendship, precautionary alliances or frank armaments. Russia was intensely unpopular with the public, especially the radical public, but governments were generally less alarmed. In that sense the Crimean War was a messy accident which could have been avoided by diplomacy, as Aberdeen always believed that it should have been. (For an interesting new argument on this see N. Rich (1985).) Britain’s mild preference for constitutional states – a preference which could be overridden when other strategic factors came into play, as they did in Italy in 1848–49 – was not unconnected with the belief that a powerful middle class, usual in a constitutional state, made for good trading relations.

This equilibrium, which suited Britain very well, was about to be overturned. The British were so oblivious to what was happening that they do not seem to have had any very clear view of the matter, never mind any ambition to intervene to influence events. The unification of virtually the whole of Italy in 1861, although unexpected by the British government, was rightly felt to be no particular political or economic threat in the foreseeable future. (It was only in the 1980s that the Italian standard of living passed the British.) The Italians lacked the coal and iron resources requisite for the first industrial revolution and had difficulty in making good their claim to be regarded as a fully fledged Great Power.

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