THE POLICIES OF A WORLD POWER:

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Before the United Kingdom took over the Presidency of the European Union, its Prime Minister, Tony Blair, addressed the European Parliament on 23rd June 2005. He upheld that the idea of Europe as united and working together, is essential for our nations to be strong enough to keep our place in this world. The following month brought the death of Sir Edward Heath, who, as Prime Minister, had taken the UK into the EEC. In his speech at Brussels on Brtains accession, Heath had stated that we have all come to recognise our common European heritage, our mutual interests and our European destiny. Edward Heath had negotiated Britains entry unsuccessfully when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister. When De Gaulle closed the door, Macmillan broadcast to the nation. For many centuries Europe has been the cradle of civilization. Everything has spread out from Europe and yet it has been the scene of some deep and bitter struggles. A disappointed Edward Heath delivered a reassuring speech before the ministers of the Member States: We are a part of Europe; by geography, tradition, history, culture and civilisation. In so much that isolation literally means turning into an island, in strictly geographical terms Britain has been isolated from the continental mainland for about eight thousand years, when gradually a strip of water divided them, creating the English Channel. Both the Roman and Norman invasions were eventually assimilated. Our link with continental Europe was reinforced. It has never been fully severed. Britains isolation from Europe was never much more than geographical. Even Margaret Thatcher acknowledged in her Euro-sceptical Bruges speech of 1988: We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history. Yet the Channel has played a crucial part psychologically. It has also protected us from invasion on numerous occasions for nearly a thousand years. Britain was the only continuous enemy of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France in wars that stretched over a period of 22 years and cast a long shadow over the nineteenth century. For the next hundred years, the war against France was known as the Great War, until another European conflict took its place. Only with the death of Palmerston, in 1865, did political leadership pass to a generation that had neither lived through nor fully grown up during those wars. In the summer of 2005 the Queen reviewed the fleet at Portsmouth, in sight of Nelsons flagship, H.M.S. Victory. A Napoleonic sea battle was re-enacted. It was to form a highlight of the nations bicentenary celebrations of Nelsons great and final victory off Trafalgar on 21stOctober 1805. Napoleon Bonaparte had played down the obstacle of the Channel in a letter to the Second Consul, Jean-Jacques Rgis de Cambacrs, on 16th November 1803: It is a mere ditch, and will be crossed as soon as someone has the courage to attempt it. As the newly self-crowned Emperor of the French he amassed an invasion force but needed his fleet to knock out Nelsons. The Battle of Trafalgar cost Nelson his life but brought Britain security from invasion. Bonaparte turned south and marched rapidly to take our continental allies by surprise. The invasion was called off. The worst that the enemy could do by sea was to attempt an economic blockade. Throughout the wars against France Britain had been the paymaster of the allied coalitions. At the Congress of Vienna Britains Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh, demonstrated that Britain had no territorial designs on the continental mainland. He insisted on only a small indemnity from France and modest colonial gains: the retention of Malta, the Cape, Mauritius, Tobago and St. Lucia. Maritime interests were primary. Upon those depended British trade and commerce, which could capitalise on her economic and industrial ascendancy. Our interests lay in maintaining a long peace in order to consolidate our substantial lead over potential economic rivals in industrialisation, to boost industry itself, strengthen the economy and allow the free flow of commerce. Furthermore, with no territorial ambitions in Europe, Britain was well placed to act as a mediator between the continental powers. That peace required that a balance of powers a just equilibrium be sustained through continuous relationships between sovereign states acting in judicious consultation. Castlereagh sought to continue the co-operation that had existed in wartime. Successful in the defeat of Bonaparte it should now be redirected to the stability of Europe and based on a

mutual interest in the prevention of war and the preservation of peace in Europe, In the immediate future, Britain would be able to concentrate on the domestic necessity of post-war economic recovery. The map of Europe was being redrawn after the collapse of the Napoleonic system. Old monarchies were being restored and old sovereignties re-established. A balanced Europe meant one based on Great Powers rather than nation-states. The slender authority of Louis XVIII needed to be enhanced, while the boundaries of France reduced to those of 1790. Britain was content with those of 1792. Attitudes had hardened after Bonapartes return from Elba. Flexibility and realism needed asserting in the face of the ideological dogmatism of absolute monarchism, exemplified by Tsar Alexander I. His Holy Alliance went further than Britain could or should. Constitutional monarchy acts through constitutional channels and unilateral decisions were confined to the authority of absolute monarchs. The purpose of the Quadruple Alliance was the establishment and protection of Peace. Going beyond its original intentions would impair the usefulness of its duties and obligations. Therefore the Holy Alliances ideological stand against democratic principles and its unnecessary interference in internal affairs of member states must be firmly rejected. As Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh would not be a party to Holy Alliances reciprocal service of suppressing uprisings inside foreign jurisdictions. Nor could Britain, as a constitutional monarchy, assert that absolute monarchy was the best form of government. The Quadruple Alliance, of which Britain was a part, was viewed by Castlereagh as a practical device to defend the general integrity of the Vienna Settlement. Thus France, as another constitutional monarchy, was also able to join, making it into the Quintuple Alliance. Britain would accept no further obligation. His State Paper of 1820 formed the basis of British foreign policy for nearly half a century. It marked clear position of non-intervention, which limited the justification of intervention to that of annexation or disturbance of territorial divisions. Thus Castlereagh confined British involvement within certain criteria. Britain was not obliged to interfere in the internal affairs of other states and was opposed the Holy Alliances principle of forceful intervention as not only an impossible obligation but also as utterly objectionable. The assumption of power by Louis Napoleon in France in 1851 brought a response from the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, which was fully in line with Castlereaghs State Paper: it is a principle of the English Government not to interfere in any way with the internal affairs of other countries; whether France chooses to be a Republic or a Monarchy, provided it be not a Social Republic, we wish to express no opinion; we are what we call in England a white paper in this respect; all we desire is the happiness and welfare of France. When Castlereagh committed suicide in 1822, his old duelling adversary, George Canning, replaced him. Canning had served previously as Foreign Secretary from 1807 to 1809. There was a time when historians viewed 1822 as representing a decisive change between as supposedly reactionary Castlereagh and a liberal Canning. More recently historians have considered such as a contrast is hardly justifiable (Norman Gash) for the real change was more of style than substance (John Clarke). Cannings emphasis was on patriotism and the national interest. For him the preservation of peace was the leading object of the policy of England. His Anglo-centric stance meant that in foreign affairs the grand object of my work is the interest of England but it was qualified by a denial that she should stand isolated and alone, pursuing an exclusive selfishness; her prosperity must contribute to the prosperity of other nations, and her stability to the safety of the world. However principled were his speeches, in the conduct of foreign affairs Canning had an essentially pragmatic approach, based upon that nature of British power and influence, as an economic and maritime power rather than a military one. He died on 8th August 1827, after only 4 months as Prime Minister. The Annual Register published a tribute to Canning, which included these words: Europe lost in him the ablest statesman, and the Commons of England the finest orator of his day. Among those who crossed the floor over parliamentary reform was Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston. Like Castlereagh his was an Irish peerage and he too had taken his seat in the House of Commons on the Pittite (Tory) side. He became a disciple of Canning but joined Greys new Whig Government in 1830. He was to dominate British foreign policy for most of the next 35 years, dying as Prime Minister in 1865. He shared with Canning an awareness of the importance of cultivating public opinion and would appeal to it over the heads of his colleagues. He did not share the Whigs general sentiment of Francophobia. While being a proponent of territorial conservatism, Palmerston believed in adhering to the spirit rather than the letter of the Vienna Settlement. The preservation of that spirit demanded flexibility. His advocacy of flexibility and pragmatism made him vulnerable to his opponents

charges of inconsistency and opportunism. Like Canning the cornerstone of his policy was the pursuit of British interest. When people ask me for what is called a policy, the only answer is that we mean to do what may seem to be best, upon each occasion as it arises, making the Interests of Our Country ones guiding principle. He saw it as the duty of a Foreign Secretary to safeguard British interests and defend British subjects. The latter was for him the issue in the case of Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew who had been born in Gibraltar and claimed therefore to be a British subject. He acted in the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity when he could say Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong. Karl Marx asserted that Palmerston inherited from Canning Englands mission to propagate Constitutionalism on the Continent. In the aftermath of the 1830 revolution in France, an ecstatic Palmerston wrote in a letter: We shall drink to the cause of Liberalism all over the world the evil spirit has been put down and will be trodden underfoot. The reign of Metternich is over. Two years later, he maintained in a parliamentary speech that constitutional states were Britains natural allies and that it was the governments duty to be attentive to their interests. Thus he supported the cause of liberal nationalism for Belgium and Italy. The principle of maintaining peace and understanding with all nations went hand in hand with the encouragement of good trading partners and overseas markets and thereby contributed to enhance national prosperity. Nevertheless that pacific policy must be consistent with a due regard for the interest, the honour, and the dignity of this country. This did not require of Britain that she should enter conflicts in which she had no real interest. After the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War, he was approached by Prince Czartoryski for assistance in the realisation of Polish nationalist interests. Palmerston replied: The English nation is able to make war but it will only do so where its own interests are concerned. We are a simple and practical nation, we do not go in for chivalrous enterprises or fight for others as the French do. The policy of non-intervention in the affairs of other sovereigns could only be justified if they directly affected the larger interests of Great Britain. This was the position he took in 1839 when advising the British Ambassador in Vienna over the second crisis involving Mehemet Ali. The Great Powers are justified in interfering in these matters, which are, in fact, a contest between a sovereign and his subject, because this contest threatens to produce great and imminent danger to the deepest interests of other Powers, and to the general peace of Europe. Those interests and that peace require the maintenance of the Turkish Empire; and the maintenance of the Turkish Empire is, therefore, the primary object to be aimed at. there can be no end to the danger with which these affairs menace the peace of Europe until Mehemet Ali shall have restored Syria to the direct authority of the Sultan; shall have retired into Egypt; and shall have interposed the Desert between his troops and authorities and the troops and authorities of the Sultan. Effective action would be assured through the co-operation of the European powers, in the resolution of which their joint interests would be served. It appears to Her Majesty's Government that if the Five Powers were to agree upon such a plan, and were to propose it to the two parties, with all the authority which belongs to the Great Powers of Europe, such an arrangement would be carried into effect, and through its means, Europe would be delivered from a great and imminent danger. Robert Blake referred to Disraeli as an instinctive Palmerstonian and as such John Charmley has portrayed him as villenously amoral. He certainly followed Palmerston in his approach to the Eastern Question, shoring up Turkey and restraining Russia from bursting out of the Straits into the Mediterranean. Furthermore Disraeli regarded Turkey as a necessary bulwark against an alleged Russian threat to the route to India (Blake). While events in the Balkans revived international concern over Turkish atrocities, Disraelis purchase of the Suez Canal shares placed a new twist on Britains priorities regarding the Eastern Question. The Suez Canal became the imperial mother countrys highway to our Indian Empire and our other dependencies. It needed protection; therefore Britain now had a major stake in Egypt. The Canal was to drag Britain into the Sudan. In its obituary for Disraeli, the Times reflected: Mr. Disraeli had determined from the first that England should play a part that became her, and not only to speak, but respected and listened to. By 1878, the

Prime Minister felt able to assert to his Sovereign: England is quite strong enough, when united as she is now, to vindicate her own rights and interests. In his speech in Manchester in 1872, as Leader of the Opposition, Disraeli had affirmed that the "maintenance of the institutions of the country" was the first great object of the Tory Party. England was "a great country, an imperial country" and the second great object of the Tory party was "to uphold the Empire of England". The Empire was a cause for national pride and united the people of England and encouraged the innate Conservatism of the working classes who " believe on the whole that the greatness and the empire of England are to be attributed to the ancient institutions of the land". Therefore "no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible of our Colonial Empire". After the loss of those American colonies that had taken part in the Revolutionary War, India became the jewel of the Second Empire. A cardinal responsibility of British governments was to defend the frontiers of British rule in India with land and especially sea routes from her. More direct and firmer British rule was imposed after the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857. Disraeli's Royal Titles Act made Victoria the 'Empress of India' in 1877. The Queen became the 'Queen-Empress' and cartoons in Punch portrayed an exchange of crowns as the grateful Queen made her Prime Minister Earl of Beaconsfield. A splendid Durbar was overseen by the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, and new pageantry introduced into the ceremony. In a letter to the Queen, Lytton described the Plain of Delhi as "a vast concourse of native Princes and nobles from all parts of India", while her imperial title was being proclaimed. General Roberts was present and recorded: It is difficult to overrate the political importance of this great gathering. It was looked upon by most of the ruling chiefs as the result of the Prince of Wales's visit, and rejoiced in as an evidence of Her Majesty's increased interest in, and appreciation of, the vast Empire of India with its many different races and peoples. Roberts was shortly to bring Disraeli a decisive victory in the Second Afghan War of 187880. The issue of Disraelis role in the evolution of the New Imperialism remains hotly debated. One is inevitably brought into questions of style or substance, for Disraeli has often been portrayed as a romantic and a visionary. Lord Salisburys daughter remarked: He saw visions, he did not draw conclusions. Even Harold Wilson wrote that Disraeli stands so high among Britain's Prime Ministers regardless of policy [because] he had the personal vision, and the skill to create a vision for his country, his Queen, and his people. On resigning as Beaconsfields Foreign Secretary in 1877, Lord Derby wrote scornfully to his successor, Lord Salisbury: He believes thoroughly in prestige as all foreigners do. And would think quite sincerely in the interests of the country to spend 20m if the result would make foreign states think more highly of us. According to C.C. Eldridge, Disraeli inject a foreign ingredient into the hitherto colourless character of British imperial sentiment: an unashamed, militant, illiberal and undemocratic spirit glorying in the achievements of British rule overseas. Disraeli was a master of ideas, not detail, and it was the part the possession of empire could play in assisting Great Britains role in world affairs that interested him. Disraeli confided in his mistress that he really believed the Eastern Question will fall to my lot to encounter- dare I say to settle. In focussing on the intgrity of the Ottoman Empire, he displayed an apparent disregard for the sufferings of its victims in the Balkans. The whole issue of the Balkans was better kept out of. .No words can describe the political intrigue, the constant rivalries, the total absence of all public spirit, the hatred of all races, the animosities of rival religions, the absence of any controlling power... Nothing short of 50,000 of Europe's best troops would produce anything like order in those parts. A Bosnian revolt in 1875 was ruthlessly suppressed. Disraeli ridiculed the rebel nationalists Fancy autonomy for Bosnia with a mixed population. Autonomy for Ireland would be less absurd. A further revolt in Bulgaria was suppressed by massacring 12,000 Bulgarian Orthodox Christians and destroying more than fifty villages and five monasteries. Disraeli made light of it. He doubted that the Turks used torture as an Oriental people have their way of executing malefactors, and generally terminate their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner." All this outraged his old Liberal adversary, William Ewart Gladstone, and brought him out of self-imposed retirement. He was appalled by Disraelis policy of supporting Turkey and disregarding the atrocities against her subject peoples. "There is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done. "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves.

In 1878, his article on Englands mission was published in The Nineteenth Century. Gladstone upheld that it was already clearly proven that the cares and calls of the British Empire are already beyond the strength of those who govern and have governed it. He argued that the British had undertaken far more in governmental responsibilities than had ever been attempted previously in human history. He rejected a narrow restless, blustering and self-asserting foreign policy appealing to self-love and the pride of community, which turned national interest into a new and baseless idolatry. Gladstones assault on Beaconsfieldism formed the central plank of his famous campaigns in 1879-80. Gladstone was the first party leader to take his case personally to the people. He undertook a heavy schedule of speeches, public engagements and railway journeys; especially for a man in his seventieth year. Gladstone was not an absolute non-interventionist but he was a reluctant one. Gladstone saw the need for action where British interests were directly concerned or threatened, especially where inaction would mean enlarging Britains commitments. He regarded Disraelis expansionism as a costly folly and an unnecessary drain on the Governments finances. We are gradually being drawn into a position at once ridiculous and dangerous in consequence of these needless engagements, contemplating no public good, lying wholly beyond the the line of our duty and responsibility. The present Administration,whether it dies intestate or not, ill undoubtedly leave an inheritance an inheritance of financial confuion at home; financial confuion in India; treaties of the strangest and most entangling kind. In his speech at West Calder on 27th November 1879, Gladstone concentrated on the themes of free trade and foreign policy. He outlined his key six right principles of foreign policy. The first thing is to foster the strength of the Empire by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great elements of national powernamely, wealth, which is a physical element, and union and contentment, which are moral elementsand to reserve the strength of the Empire, to reserve the expenditure of that strength, for great and worthy occasions abroad. Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. In an earlier speech, he cautioned his listeners against the idle dreams of those who are always telling you that the strength of England depends, sometimes they say upon the its extending its Empire, or upon what it possesses beyond these shores. Rely upon it the strength of Great Britain and Ireland is within the United Kingdom. He had made the same positive point two years earlier in an article on Aggression on Egypt and Freedom in the East: The root and pith and substance of the material greatness of our nation lies within the compass of these islands and is, except in trifling particulars, independent of all and every sort of political domination beyond them. His second and third principles were ones to which most of his nineteenth-century predecessors had generally espoused. His second was the aim of foreign policy ought to be to preserve to the nations of the worldand especially to the Christian nations of the worldthe blessings of peace. In my opinion the third sound principle is this: to strive to cultivate and maintain, aye, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the powers of Europe in union together. And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize, and fetter, and bind up the selfish aims of each. Common action means common objects; and the only objects for which you can unite together the powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all. That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy. His fourth principle was to avoid needless and entangling engagements. if you increase engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations. It flowed from the first principle and was founded upon its premise. That he made clear the previous day at Dalkeith: What do you mean by this sort of strengthening the Empire? It is simply loading the Empire. It is not strengthening the Empire. The meaning of it is this, that with that limited store of men and funds which these islands can supply, we are continually to go on enlarging our responsibilities and our dangers all over the surface of the earth. My fifth principle is this, gentlemen: to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations. This had been a consistent theme of his for at least three decades. In 1850, he launched an attack on Palmerstons Civis Romanus sum speech and urged his listeners to take a morally motivated cause: let us recognize, and recognize with frankness, the equality of the weak with the strong; the principles of brotherhood among nations, and of their sacred independence. His sixth principle reached to the kernel of his liberalism: the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by the love of freedom. For such a principle he

claimed a substantial precedent. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character, and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large. In the foreign policy of this country the name of Canning ever will be honoured. The name of Russell ever will be honoured. The name of Palmerston ever will be honoured by those who recollect the erection of the kingdom of Belgium, and the union of the disjoined provinces of Italy. It is that sympathy, not a sympathy with disorder, but, on the contrary, founded upon the deepest and most profound love of orderit is that sympathy which in my opinion ought to be the very atmosphere in which a foreign secretary of England ought to live and to move. Beyond these six principles, he spoke and wrote elsewhere of the following: an opposition to expansionism and self-assertion; a universal equality of human rights (The ground on which we stand is not British, nor European, but it is human, the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own) and the right of small nations to justice and fair treatment and, in some cases, self-determination. He appealed to an established tradition not which disregards British interests, but which teaches you to seek the promotion of those interests in obeying the dictates of honour and justice. For Gladstone: The greatest triumph of our time will be the enthronement of the idea of public right as the governing idea of European politics. He outlined that aspiration when contrasting his position to Palmerston in 1850. What, Sir, ought a Foreign Secretary to be? I understand it to be his duty to conciliate peace with dignity. I think it to be the very first of all his duties studiously to observe, and to exalt in honour among mankind, that great code of principles which is termed the law of nations, if, indeed we wish to maintain and to consolidate the brotherhood of nations, to promote the peace and welfare of the world. Gladstone saw a substantial improvement in the conduct of foreign affairs under Salisbury over that of Disraeli. He gave credit to Salisburys approach in his Newcastle Speech of 1891: its spirit had undergone a beneficial change, that appeals to passion and to pride are no longer sent broadcast over the country, and that on the contrary a more just, more genial, and more kindly spirit is exhibited by the departmental portion of the activity of Lord Salisbury. Writing in April 1863 the future third Marquess of Salisbury affirmed: Consistency is the simple test that will unerringly separate true moderation from its base counterfeit. He himself demonstrated a basic consistency between the principles he enunciated in his writings for the Quarterly and Saturday Reviews in the 1860s and his conduct of foreign affairs as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. In his essay on Castlereagh (1862), the then Viscount Cranborne attributed the failure of the Congress of Vienna to the practice of foreign intervention in domestic quarrels. However he qualified this by acknowledging that governments might intervene to counteract the extension of foreign influence if it threatened their own security or might be shown to be necessary for the maintenance of the balance of powers. Influence, if it be excessive and constant, is veiled conquest influence, where it amounts to conquest, can only be met by conquest (1863). In a carefully balanced structure, like the European system of nations, each State has a vested interest in the complete and real independence of its neighbour. There were restraints upon governments deriving firstly from the system of public law developed in the relationships of European states and secondly from the principle of honourable behaviour equally necessary for the operation of international diplomacy. Governments who violated it lost their credibility, as Palmerston had done for Britain over Schleswig-Holstein. We have to assure our friends that we shall stand by them; we have to assure our enemies that we are permanently to be feared (1885). Bluff was never admissible. He especially disliked it when combined with an attitude of confrontation. Statesmen should recognise the actual limitations on their capacity to influence events and change events, while securing the nations safety and honour. This was Palmerstons calumny over Schleswig-Holstein. He led Denmark to suppose they could rely on Britains help, announcing, that it would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to contend. Bismarck called his bluff and Palmerston backed away. In April 1864, Salisbury had written: The crisis has at last now come. He had asserted that Englands insistence on concessions had proved futile and that the independence which she professed to value so highly was at an end. The people whom she affected to befriend are in danger of being swept away. But as far as effective aid

goes, England stands aloof. Her pledges and her threats are gone with the last years snow and she is content to watch with cynical philosophy the destruction of those who trusted in the one, and the triumph of those who were wise enough to spurn the other. Salisbury saw the task of the Foreign Secretary as being to uphold Englands honour steadily and fearlessly and always to be prone to let action go along with words rather than to let it lag behind them. His daughter and biographer, Lady Gwendolen Cecil, recorded that Salisbury never used language of menace or of encouragement without having first, so far as he was able, reckoned up the cost of translating it into action, and without having come to the conclusion that it was a cost that he was prepared to meet. Salisbury rebuked his colleagues: Are you prepared to fight? Because if not you had better hold your tongue. That willingness must howecer depend on the availability of armed force. For Salisbury it made no sense trying to apply private ethical standards to issues of international politics. As individuals and as nations we live in states utterly different from each other. He had no sympathy for those who brought personal morlity into the conduct of diplomacy. He abhorred humbug and cant. He saw the flaw in a self-righteous proclamation of Britains example. Indeed it was a very gross piece of hypocrisy to say that England upon all occassions was to come forward in defence of oppressed nationalities when a great portion of her Empire is constituted of them (1855). He shared Gladstones strong antipathy to war as the final and supreme evil. His son reflected that he hated war and his hatred of it grew as he grew older. He disliked jingoism and militarism. Modern technology had terrible effects on the conduct of war and therefore one should be prudent and defensive, with the utmost importance attached to maintaining peace. Like Canning and Palmerston, he realised the vital necessity of heeding public opinion. No government could commit their countryman to war without their support. The British government cannot undertake to declare war, for any purpose, unless it is a purpose of which the electors of the country approve and public opinion would largely, if not exclusively, governed by the value of the casus belli [Cabinet memorandum, 1901]. The term splendid isolation was first applied to Lord Salisburys foreign policy by the Canadian Parliament on 16th January 1896. George Foster referred to these somewhat troublesome days when the great Mother Empire stands splendidly isolated in Europe. The Times used splendid isolation six days later in a heading referring to a speech by Joseph Chamberlain. The nomenclature stuck. George Goschen, the First Lord of the Admiralty, speaking on the Government's foreign policy in Lewes on 26th February, was not convinced that isolation was an appropriate description of Britains position but acknowledged that we have stood alone in that which is called isolation- our splendid isolation, as one of our Colonial friends was good enough to call it. Let us look the matter in the face. We cannot make alliances unless we are prepared to give as well as receive. Salisbury used the term only as a mild rebuke of his critics complacency in his Guildhall Speech the following November. I see no course which this country can wisely take than adherence to the European Concert. The European Concert means six powers acting together. He compared the degrre to which Britain and the Continental powers would be hurt by a European war and concluded that his audience could not expect those Continental powrs to look at on their problems with the same spirit which you, in your splendid isolation, are able to examine all the circumstances. While Salisbury did not attach an unqualified idealism to the European Concert, he necertheles regarded it as a positive force. In spite of constant errors, it is on the whole a beneficial institution. The federated action of Europe is our sole hope of escaping from the constant terror of war, which weighs down the spirits and darkens the prospect of every nation in this part of the world. The federation of Europe is the only hope we have (1897). Yet he also expressed in the same speech a note of caution, for he portrayed the Continental powers as envying our Empire, occupying our markets, encroaching upon our sphere, and whose efforts, unless we are wide awake and united and enterprising, will end in diminishing still further our means of supporting our vast industrial population. Thus, as Andrew Roberts has maintained, Salisbury acknowledged that the Concert of Europe acted together as independent competitors, whose federated action was one of occasional summits to preserve peace and their global ascendancy. The first duty of a British government is towards the people of this country, to maintain their interests and their rights; our second is to all humanity (1895). There was however no contradiction in the pursuit of both national interests and of friendly relations with other European powers. There is all the difference in the world between good-

natured, good-humoured effort to keep well in with your neighbours and that spirit of haughty and sullen isolation which has been dignified by the name of 'non-intervention'. We are part of the Community of Europe and we must do our duty as such (1888). Andrew Roberts wrote of Salisbury in 1999: Never a Little Englander, Jingoist or isolationist, Salisbury believed in the Concert of Europe deciding issues of peace or war together but also independently, as his hero Castlereagh had achieved at Vienna in 1815 and as he himself had successfully managed at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Salisbury sought friendly relations with the other great powers but rejected formal alliances. Such alliances might bind Britain to a casus belli which was either irrelevant or detrimental to her interests. He wrote to Queen Victoria in 1898: "Isolation is much less dangerous than the danger of being dragged into wars which do not concern us." Furthermore it was undesirable that a government should commit its successors to either permanent alliances or even temporary ones were inappropriate in a fast changing and unpredictable world. As Goschen pointed out in 1896: Our situation is not an isolation of weakness: it is deliberately chosen, this freedom, to act as we choose in any circumstance that might arise. He declined Bismarcks offer of a formal alliance in 1889 and yet remained on excellent terms with the Iron Chancellor and his successor, Caprivi. The Franco-Russian Alliance and the Triple Alliance left Britain as the only major nonaligned power. Salisbury dissociated himself from Chamberlains overtures for an Anglo-German alliance in 1898. He told the German ambassador: You ask too much of our friendship. Throughout his premierships, he had served as his Foreign Secretary. Reaching seventy years of age in 1900, he handed the post over to Lord Lansdowne. He disagreed with Lansdowne over the AngloJapanese Alliance of 1902. Ill health made him resign the seals of office altogether that year. He died in 1903. Under his premiership Britain had not stood aloof or alone but had sought to uphold and safeguard friendships through agreements and conventions. In 1900, the world's population is reckoned to have been one hundred and sixty thousand million, one quarter of which, four hundred thousand million, was ruled over by the octogenarian grandmother of the Emperor of Germany and the Empress of Russia. Queen Victoria's navy still ruled the seas and her empire stretched over one fifth of the world's land mass. It was indeed an empire over which the sun never set. Britain had been a world power in the nineteenth century and yet those who had formulated her foreign policy had generally been pursuers of peace and of consultation. As Canning observed in 1826: How seldom, in the whole history of the wars of Europe, has any war between two great Powers ended, in the obtaining of the exact, the identical object, for which the war was begun. Nevertheless they had seldom flinched from their obligations to protect British interests and British subjects. Britain had sought to work with the Concert of Europe and had avoided becoming entangled in more than one major European conflict since 1815. Since Castlereaghs advocacy of the just equilibrium, British premiers and foreign secretaries had advocated the balance of powers. The policy of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries had worked well in Britains interest. As Palmerston proclaimed: We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow. Many articles were written during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , drawing parallels and lessons from these Victorians and applying them to the conduct of Bush and Blair. This is not really the task of a historian. Nevertheless perhaps they being dead may yet speak to us. Salisburys caution about going to war in an age of modern technology, Gladstones plea for a common humanity and the equal rights of nations, sensitivity to public opinion, the preference for constitutional forms of government and the focus on great powers not displaying a spirit of haughty and sullen isolation but rather combining in federated action and in seeking an international rather than a unilateral solution. They constantly insisted on non-intervention in the internal affairs of other nations in Gladstones words, rebuking Palmerstons Civis Romanus sum speech: Let us refrain from all gratuitous and arbitrary meddling in the internal concerns of other States, even as we should resent the same interference if it were attempted to be practiced towards ourselves. Circumstances change, power shifts, different ages face different challenges and yet human nature does not change and therefore we can learn lessons from the past. If such principles still hold true, perhaps they should be applied in the twenty-first century.

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ROBERT STEWART, VISCOUNT CASTLEREAGH (1769-1822) Foreign Secretary: 1812-22

GEORGE CANNING (1770-1827) Foreign Secretary: 1807-9, 1822-7; Prime Minister 1827

HENRY JOHN TEMPLE, VISCOUNT PALMERSTON, (1784-1865) Foreign Secretary: 1830-4, 1835-4, 1846-Dec 1851; Prime Minister: 1868, 1874-80

BENJAMIN DISRAELI, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD (1804-81) Prime Minister 1855-58,1859-65

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE (1809-98) Prime Minister: 1868-74, 1880-5, 1886, 1892-4

ROBERT ARTHUR TALBOT GASCOYNE-CECIL, MARQUESS OF SALISBURY (1830-1903) Foreign Secretary: 1878-1880, 1885-86, 1887-1892, 1895-1900 Prime Minister: 1885-6, 1886- 92, 1895-1902

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