User:Phunting/History of British foreign policy

The History of British foreign policy is an overview of major trends regarding the foreign policy of Britain, since the 1707 Act of Union of England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom.

Early Georgian Era to American Revolution: 1707 - 1793






The early Georgian era was marked by a period of relative peace with the consolidation of the Hanoverian monarch and an unprecedented length of peace with France. In 1717 George I contributed to the creation of the Triple Alliance, an anti-Spanish league composed of Great Britain, France and the United Provinces. In 1718 the Holy Roman Empire was added to the body which became known as the Quadruple Alliance. The subsequent War of the Quadruple Alliance involved the same issue as the War of the Spanish Succession. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) had recognised the grandson of King Louis XIV of France, Philip, as the King of Spain on the condition that he gave up his rights to succeed to the French throne. Upon the death of Louis XIV in 1715, however, Philip sought to overturn the treaty.

Spain supported a Jacobite-led invasion of Scotland in 1719 but stormy seas allowed only about three hundred Spanish troops to arrive in Scotland. A base was established at Eilean Donan Castle on the west Scottish coast in April, only for it to be destroyed by British ships a month later. Attempts by the Jacobites to recruit Scottish clansmen yielded a fighting force of only about a thousand men. The Jacobites were poorly equipped, and were easily defeated by British artillery at the Battle of Glen Shiel. The clansmen dispersed into the Highlands, and the Spaniards surrendered.

The invasion never posed any serious threat to George's government. With the French this time fighting against him in the War, Philip's armies fared poorly. As a result the Spanish and French thrones remained separate. Simultaneously Hanover gained from the resolution of the Great Northern War which had been caused by rivalry between Sweden and Russia for control of the Baltic. The Swedish territories of Bremen and Verden were ceded to Hanover in 1719, with Hanover paying Sweden monetary compensation for the loss of territory.

George II played an honorific role in Britain following his ascension to the throne in 1727, and closely followed the advice of Sir Robert Walpole and senior ministers who made the major decisions. In 1730 concerns over the domestic consequences of Britain being unable to shift the French position over the Dunkirk works caused a shift in attitude towards France, and the alliance was abandoned in favour of secretive talks with Austria. Although the king was eager for war in Europe, his ministers were more cautious. The Anglo-Spanish War was brought to an end, and George unsuccessfully pressed Walpole to join the War of the Polish Succession on the side of the German states. In April 1733, Walpole withdrew an unpopular excise bill that had gathered strong opposition, including from within his own party. George lent support to Walpole by dismissing the bill's opponents from their court offices.

Against Walpole's wishes, but to George's delight, Britain once again entered into war, the War of Jenkins' Ear, with Spain in 1739. Britain's war with Spain became part of the War of the Austrian Succession when a major European war broke out upon the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1740. At dispute was the right of Charles's daughter, Maria Theresa, to succeed to his Austrian dominions. George spent the summers of 1740 and 1741 in Hanover, where he was more able to intervene directly in European diplomatic affairs in his capacity as elector.

Walpole retired in 1742 after over 20 years in office. He was replaced by Spencer Compton, Lord Wilmington, whom George had originally considered for the premiership in 1727. Lord Wilmington, however, was a figurehead; actual power was held by others, such as Lord Carteret, George's favourite minister after Walpole. When Wilmington died in 1743, Henry Pelham took his place at the head of the government. The pro-war faction was led by Carteret, who claimed that French power would increase if Maria Theresa failed to succeed to the Austrian throne. George agreed to send 12,000 hired Hessian and Danish mercenaries to Europe, ostensibly to support Maria Theresa. Without conferring with his British ministers, George stationed them in Hanover to prevent enemy French troops from marching into the electorate. The British army had not fought in a major European war in over 20 years, and the government had badly neglected its upkeep. George had pushed for greater professionalism in the ranks, and promotion by merit rather than by sale of commissions, but without much success. An allied force of Austrian, British, Dutch, Hanoverian and Hessian troops engaged the French at the Battle of Dettingen on 16/27 June 1743. George personally accompanied them, leading them to victory, thus becoming the last British monarch to lead troops into battle. Though his actions in the battle were admired, the war became unpopular with the British public, who felt that the king and Carteret were subordinating British interests to Hanoverian ones. Carteret lost support, and to George's dismay resigned in 1744.

George's French opponents encouraged rebellion by the Jacobites, the supporters of the Roman Catholic claimant to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart, often known as the Old Pretender. Stuart was the son of James II, who had been deposed in 1688 and replaced by his Protestant relations. Two prior rebellions in 1715 and 1719 had failed. In July 1745, the Old Pretender's son, Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland, where support for his cause was highest. George, who was summering in Hanover, returned to London at the end of August. The Jacobites defeated British forces in September at the Battle of Prestonpans, and then moved south into England. The Jacobites failed to gain further support, and the French reneged on a promise of help. Losing morale, the Jacobites retreated back into Scotland. On 16/27 April 1746, Charles faced George's military-minded son Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, in the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The ravaged Jacobite troops were routed by the government army. Charles escaped to France, but many of his supporters were caught and executed. Jacobitism was all but crushed; no further serious attempt was made at restoring the House of Stuart. The War of the Austrian Succession continued until 1748, when Maria Theresa was recognized as Archduchess of Austria. The peace was celebrated by a fête in Green Park, London, for which Handel composed Music for the Royal Fireworks.

In 1754, Pelham died, to be succeeded by his elder brother, the Duke of Newcastle. Hostility between France and Britain, particularly over the colonization of North America, continued. Fearing a French invasion of Hanover, George aligned himself with Prussia, the enemy of Austria. Russia and France allied with their former enemy Austria. A French invasion of the British-held island of Minorca led to the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756. Public disquiet over British failures at the start of the conflict led to the resignation of Newcastle and the appointment of the Duke of Devonshire as prime minister and William Pitt the Elder as Secretary of State for the Southern Department. In April the following year, George dismissed Pitt, in an attempt to construct an administration more to his liking. Over the succeeding three months attempts to form another stable ministerial combination failed. In June, James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave, held the seals of office for only four days. By the start of July, Pitt was recalled, and the Duke of Newcastle returned as prime minister. As Secretary of State, Pitt guided policy relating to the war. Great Britain, Hanover and Prussia and their allies Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel were pitted against other European powers, including France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Saxony. The war involved multiple theatres from Europe to North America and India, where British dominance increased with the victories of Robert Clive over French forces and their allies at the Battle of Arcot and the Battle of Plassey.

George's son the Duke of Cumberland commanded the king's troops in Northern Germany. In 1757, Hanover was invaded and George gave Cumberland full powers to conclude a separate peace. By September, however, he was furious at Cumberland's negotiated settlement, which he felt greatly favoured the French. George said his son had "ruined me and disgraced himself". Cumberland, by his own choice, resigned his military offices, and George revoked the peace deal on the grounds that the French had infringed it by disarming Hessian troops after the ceasefire.

In the annus mirabilis of 1759 British forces captured Quebec and Guadeloupe. A French plan to invade Britain was defeated following naval battles at Lagos and Quiberon Bay, and a resumed French advance on Hanover was halted by a joint British–Hanoverian force at the Battle of Minden.

George II was succeeded by his grandson George III in 1760

The French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars: 1793 - 1815


The British government had somewhat mixed reactions to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, and when war broke out on the Continent in 1792, it initially remained neutral. But the following January, Louis XVI was beheaded. This combined with a threatened invasion of the Netherlands by France spurred Britain to declare war. For the next 23 years, the two nations were at war except for a short period in 1802–1803. Britain alone among the nations of Europe never submitted to or formed an alliance with France. Throughout the 1790s, the British repeatedly defeated the navies of France and its allies, but were unable to perform any significant land operations. An Anglo-Russian invasion of the Netherlands in 1799 accomplished little except the capture of the Dutch fleet.

At the threshold to the 19th century, Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened invasion of Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun.

Pax Britannica: 1815 - 1914






From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until World War I in 1914, the United Kingdom played the role of hegemon, where the balance of power was the main aim. It is also in this time that the British Empire became the largest empire of all time. Imposition of a "British Peace" on key maritime trade routes began in 1815 with the annexation of British Ceylon. The global superiority of British military and commerce was guaranteed by a divided and relatively weak continental Europe, and the presence of the Royal Navy on all of the world's oceans and seas. Following the Congress of Vienna the British Empire's economic strength continued to develop through naval dominance and diplomatic efforts to maintain the balance of power within a Europe that lacked a pre-eminent nation state.

In this era of peace, it provided services such as suppression of piracy and slavery. Sea power, however, did not project on land. Land wars fought between the major powers include the Crimean War, the Franco-Austrian War, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, as well as numerous conflicts between lesser powers. The Royal Navy prosecuted the Opium wars (1839 – 1842 and 1856 – 1860) against Imperial China, and had no influence on the Russo-Japanese War (1904 – 05.) In 1905, the Royal Navy was superior to any other two navies in the world, combined. In 1906, it was considered that Britain's only likely potential naval enemy was Germany.

The Pax Britannica was weakened by the breakdown of the continental order which had been established by the Congress of Vienna. Relations between the Great Powers of Europe were strained to breaking point by issues such as the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which led to the Crimean War, and later the emergence of new nation states in the form of Italy and Germany after the Franco-Prussian War. Both of these two wars involved Europe's largest states and armies. The industrialisation of Germany, the Empire of Japan, and the United States of America further contributed to the decline of British industrial supremacy following the late 19th century.

The Great War: 1914 - 1918


Britain entered the war because of its implicit support for France, which had entered to support Russia, which in turn had entered to support Serbia. Even more important than that chain of links was Britain's determination to honor its commitment to defend Belgium. Britain was loosely part of the Triple Entente with France and Russia, which (with smaller allies) fought the Central Powers of Germany, Austria and the Ottoman Empire. After a few weeks the Western Front turned into a killing ground in which millions of men died but no army made a large advance.

The stalemate required an endless supply of men and munitions. By 1916, volunteering fell off, the government imposed conscription in Britain (but not in Ireland) to keep up the strength of the Army. After a rough start in industrial mobilisation, Britain replaced prime minister Asquith in December 1916 with the much more dynamic Liberal leader David Lloyd George. The nation now successfully mobilised its manpower, womanpower, industry, finances, Empire and diplomacy, in league with France and the U.S. to defeat the enemy. After defeating Russia, the Germans tried to win in the spring of 1918 before the millions of American soldiers arrived. They failed, and they were overwhelmed and finally accepted an Armistice in November, 1918, that amounted to a surrender.

Britain eagerly supported the war, but in Ireland the Catholics were restless and plotted a rebellion in 1916. It failed but the brutal repression that followed turned that element against Britain. The economy grew about 14% from 1914 to 1918 despite the absence of so many men in the services; by contrast the German economy shrank 27%. The War saw a decline of civilian consumption, with a major reallocation to munitions. The government share of GDP soared from 8% in 1913 to 38% in 1918 (compared to 50% in 1943). The war forced Britain to use up its financial reserves and borrow large sums from New York banks. After the U.S. entered in April 1917, the Treasury borrowed directly from the U.S. government.

The Royal Navy dominate the seas, almost, but not quite, defeating the smaller German fleet in the only great battle, the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Germany was blockaded and was increasingly short of food. It tried to fight back with submarines, despite the risk of war by the powerful neutral power the United States. The waters around Britain were declared a war zone where any ship, neutral or otherwise, was a target. After the liner Lusitania was sunk in May 1915, drowning over 100 American passengers, protests by the United States led Germany to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. With victory over Russia in 1917 Germany now calculated it could finally have numerical superiority on the Western Front. Planning for a massive spring offensive in 1918, it resumed the sinking of all merchant ships without warning. The US entered the war alongside the Allies (without actually joining them), and provided the needed money and supplies to keep them going. the u-boats were defeated by a convoy system across the Atlantic.

On other fronts, the British, French, Australians, and Japanese seized Germany's colonies. Britain fought the Ottoman Empire, suffering defeats in the Gallipoli Campaign) and in Mesopotamia, while arousing the Arabs who helped expel the Turks from their lands. Exhaustion and war weariness were growing worse in 1917, as the fighting in France continued with no end in sight. The German spring offensives of 1918 failed, and with the arrival of the American in summer at the rate of 10,000 a day the Germans realized they were being overwhelmed. Germany agreed to an armistice—actually a surrender—on 11 November 1918.

Victorian attitudes and ideals that had continued into the first years of the 20th century changed during World War I. The army had traditionally never been a large employer in the nation, with the regular army standing at 247,432 at the start of the war. By 1918, there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force, newly formed from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation," and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front.

Interbellum: 1918 - 1939
Vivid memories of the horrors and deaths of the World War made Britain and its leaders strongly inclined to pacifism in the interwar era. The challenge came from dictators, first Benito Mussolini of Italy, then Adolf Hitler of a much more powerful Nazi Germany. The League of Nations proved disappointing to its supporters; it was unable to resolve any of the threats posed by the dictators. British policy was to "appease" them in the hopes they would be satiated. By 1938 it was clear that war was looming, and that Germany had the world's most powerful military. The final act of appeasement came when Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler's demands at the Munich Agreement of 1938. Instead of satiation Hitler menaced Poland, and at last Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dropped appeasement and stood firm in promising to defend Poland. Hitler however cut a deal with Joseph Stalin to divide Eastern Europe; when Germany did invade Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war; the British Commonwealth followed London's lead.

World War II: 1939 - 1945


When Britain declared war on Nazi Germany at the outset of World War II, it was in possession of a large empire of territories that had achieved varying degrees of independence. The assistance provided by the British Empire to Britain in terms of manpower and material was critical to the war effort, but it proved impossible to defend itself against simultaneous attacks by the Axis Powers. Britain turned to the United States for support in prosecuting the war and defence of the Empire. Although Britain and the Empire emerged from the war as victors, and captured territories were returned to British rule, the costs of the war and the nationalist fervour that it had stoked meant that it was a catalyst for the decolonization which took place in the following decades.

The Cold War: 1945 – 1991




After 1945 Britain systematically reduced its overseas commitments. Practically all the colonies became independent. Britain reduced its involvements in the Middle east, with the humiliating Suez Crisis of 1956 marking the end of its status as a superpower. However Britain did forge close military ties with the United States, and with traditional foes such as France and Germany, in the NATO military alliance. After years of debate (and rebuffs), Britain joined the Common Market in 1973; it is now the European Union. However it did not merge financially, and kept the pound separate from the Euro.

1991 – present