British Foreign Policy Notes

Foreign policy

Foreign policy

Contents

• Past questions

• Quotes

  • Historiography

  • Castlereagh

  • Canning

  • Aberdeen

  • Palmerston

  • Russell

  • Malmesbury

  • Granville

  • Derby

  • Clarendon

  • Salisbury

  • Rosebery

  • Grey

  • Balfour

• Maps

  • The Vienna settlement

  • Foreign Secretaries graph

• Chronology

  • Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and incumbent Prime Ministers

  • International events

  • Domestic events

• General comments

  • Historiography

  • Principles

  • Intervention

  • Means

  • Continuity

  • Pragmatism

  • Power

  • Control

  • Nationalism

• Castlereagh

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

  • The United States

  • Nationalism

  • Historiography

• Canning

  • Background

  • Approach

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

  • The United States

  • Nationalism

• Dudley

  • Summary

• Aberdeen I

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

  • Nationalism

• Palmerston I

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • Nationalism

• Wellington

  • Summary

• Palmerston II

  • Approach

  • France

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The United States

  • The Empire

• Aberdeen II

  • Approach

  • France

  • Russia

  • The United States

• Palmerston III

  • Approach

  • France

  • Nationalism

• Granville I

  • Summary

• Malmesbury I

  • Summary

• Russell I

  • Background

  • Approach

  • France

  • Russia

• Clarendon I

  • Background

  • France

  • Russia

  • The United States

  • The Empire

• Malmesbury II

  • Summary

• Russell II

  • Approach

  • France

  • Germany

  • The United States

  • The Empire

  • Nationalism

• Clarendon II

  • Approach

  • Beliefs

  • Germany

  • The United States

• Derby I

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • Approach

• Clarendon III

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • The United States

• Granville II

  • Background

  • France

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • The United States

• Derby II

  • Background

  • Turkey

• Salisbury I

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • Approach

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

• Granville III

  • Background

  • Approach

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

• Salisbury II

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • Russia

  • Turkey

• Rosebery I

  • Summary

• Iddesleigh

• Salisbury III

  • Approach

  • Beliefs

  • Germany

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

• Rosebery II

  • Background

  • Beliefs

• Kimberley

  • Summary

• Salisbury IV

  • Background

  • France

  • Turkey

  • The United States

  • The Empire

• Lansdowne

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The United States

  • The Empire

• Grey

  • Background

  • Approach

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • The Empire

  • Nationalism

• Balfour

  • Background

  • Beliefs

  • France

  • Germany

  • Russia

  • Turkey

  • The Empire

  • Nationalism

• Curzon

  • Background

  • Approach

  • Russia

  • The Empire

Quotes

Historiography

• Of ‘that remarkable continuity of ideas which runs through our foreign policy during the nineteenth century’.

  • E Jones Parry.

• ‘Foreign policy-makers have never operated in a vacuum’.

  • Andrew Porter.

Castlereagh

• ‘I met Murder on the way – He had a mask like Castlereagh’.

  • Percy Bysshe Shelly, The Masque of Anarchy.

• It would seek ‘the maintenance of the peace of Europe’.

  • The Quadruple Alliance Treaty (1815).

• “By what right could she (Britain) force a population, which had freed itself because its government was oppressive, to place itself once more under the domination of that same government?”

  • Castlereagh’s question to the Russian ambassador over Latin American independence.

• That ‘barbarous as it is, Turkey forms in the system of Europe a necessary evil’.

  • Castlereagh.

• “It never was however intended as an Union for the Government of the World, or for the Superintendence of the Internal Affairs of other States.”

  • Castlereagh on the Quadruple Alliance, from the 1820 State Paper.

• Everyone ‘who wishes prosperity to England, must wish prosperity to America’.

  • Lord Liverpool.

Canning

• Equal dangers came from ‘simple democracy’ and ‘simple Despotism’, and Britain needed a course ‘between Jacobinism and altruism’.

  • Canning.

• The Congress System was a ‘new and very questionable policy’.

  • Canning.

• ‘(O)ur true policy has always been not to interfere except in great emergencies, and then with commanding force’.

  • Canning on European affairs.

• ‘I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.’

  • Canning on the French intervention in Spain.

• ‘Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs badly, she is English’.

  • Canning in 1824.

Aberdeen

• Aberdeen was ‘a great Greek’.

  • As described by one of his friends.

• Turkey was destroyed, and ‘the Tranquillity of the World… along with it’.

  • Wellington after Navarino.

Palmerston

• ‘One thing is certain – the French must go out of Belgium, or we have a general war, and war in a given number of days.’

  • Palmerston’s letter to Ambassador Granville, intercepted by the French.

• ‘Diplomats and protocols are very good things, but there are no better peace-keepers than well-appointed three-deckers’.

  • Palmerston.

• ‘[S]o much the better; there are several of her colonies which would suit us remarkably well’.

  • Palmerston on the prospect of war with Portugal in 1839.

• ‘The interest of England was the maintenance of general peace throughout Europe’.

  • Palmerston.

• The ‘notion that I am more indifferent than I ought to be as to the risk of war’.

  • Palmerston.

• ‘[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.’

  • Palmerston, Civis Romanus Sum speech, 1850.

• ‘We cannot send an army to Poland and the burning of the Russian fleet would be as effectual as the burning of Moscow’.

  • Palmerston to a Polish revolutionary.

• ‘Afghanistan must be ours or Russia’s’.

  • Palmerston.

• Remember ‘what a power of prestige England possesses abroad’.

  • Palmerston’s advice to Malmesbury.

Russell

• The situation will be resolved through the ‘mutual concert between the Great Powers’.

  • Lord John Russell on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Malmesbury

• ‘The policy of insisting and threatening is Palmerstonian’.

  • Lord Malmesbury to Disraeli.

Granville

• Palmerston ‘wasted the strength derived by England from the great war by his brag’.

  • Lord Granville.

• ‘The bombardment of Alexandria, like all butchery is popular’.

  • Liberal MP and Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Charles Dilke...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our British Foreign Policy, 1815 - 1924 Notes.