The Old English First Foreign Policy

Part two of a guest essay by Owen Edwards

The foreign policy of England should be to maintain peace, not only for herself but between the powers of the world. This should be her policy, not only because she can have no interest in a change of the state of possession of the several powers...but because she has the most extensive commercial relations depending upon peace with each and all the powers of the world, the interruption of which must be injurious to her prosperity.

Wellington

When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish.

Pitt the Elder

The Primacy of Peace

The established priority of Britain since 1688 has been to create a balance of power in Europe and to prevent any given party from achieving pre-eminence. This requires the possibility of war – indeed, from 1688 to 1815 Britain participated in five or six major wars in pursuit of balance of power – but the aim is, in fact, peace. As a mercantile island nation, peace is best for us, and if that is not possible, a balance of European power – indeed, global power – is next most preferable.

Pitt the Elder – henceforth Chatham – means this when he marks out trade as our red line. The ability to do business, to find markets for our goods and to fill our needfuls, is pressing for an island nation. There is no natural line of extension to seek beyond our isles, in ordinary terms; empire is quite a different thing, and at any rate the British Empire operated differently from most of its peers. We have what we have on these islands and in those waters over which we can exert control – certain resources, coal, oil, gypsum, some lithium, and the rest; the terrain, the landscape, the naturally best sites for centres of trade and manufacture; and the people, with their skill and inventiveness and whatever spirit we retain.

So war in Europe is unappealing, because we can scarcely gain thereby. Wellington’s quote – that we do not desire any change in possessions amongst the several powers – speaks to this point. We may extend, in a globalised world, the principle further; war in general, insofar as it interferes with the trade of goods to our benefit, is not in our interest. Selling arms can be lucrative, but using them has never washed out in the net. It is in Britain’s interest to encourage peace and prosperity wherever we have influence.

This global element has in fact always been present in our policy. Our wars under Chatham and Wellington in India – against the French, Mughals, Bengalis, Mysore, and whomever else – were caused directly or indirectly the same actuating principle: we needed access to resources and markets, and would not be blocked from them, knowing that we must trade or die. This central British interest – the safety and openness of global trade – is more relevant now than ever, as the Houthis and the People's Liberation Army Navy’s “coast guard” vessels will cheerfully remind you.

There is an implication, a corollary to all this – that Britain’s interest is in the relative balance of power between its rivals, and in the stasis of that balance once achieved. Britain’s rise from mid-rate power to the first modern superpower was based on a consistent application of this principle.

It begins in William of Orange’s integration of Britain into his alliance system against the great expansionist power of his age. Twice Britain was the chief Western European power facing down the Sun King, and even as France scratched out winning draws, Britain’s power and influence expanded. William’s interest begins as Holland’s interest, in continental survival against Louis’ expansionism; but it proved quickly to be in the interest of nascent Britain, too, which had stagnated badly whilst attempting subservience to France. Certainly William’s second war, over the Spanish Succession, is clearly in Britain’s interest, to prevent the permanent combination of France and Spain – a deadly risk for an Atlantic nation.

Britain’s wars with France through the middle of the 18^th century have a significantly American and Indian character, but it is worth remembering that the preponderance of interest in Britain itself in these conflicts is over the control of trade in these places. America was indeed a fine outlet for both courageous pioneers and restless troublemakers (sometimes the same people), but it was as a source of and destination for goods it held great interest for the national centre – which was of course eventually the proximate cause of separation, when the benefits of that trade were misunderstood by London. This is even clearer in the case of India, where mass settlement was never in view and where no geographical triumph over the French was required – else we, not India much later, would have annexed Pondicherry.

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – in which Britain takes up an absolutely decisive role of alliance-builder, over no fewer than seven Coalitions – have their own points of difference; they are conceived of as wars of national survival from the start, as we shall touch on in the final section below. But beyond any fear of domestic unrest and the bubonic characteristics of the Revolutionary government, balance of power and access to trade was at the heart of British policy. Indeed, when it comes to renewed war with Napoleon from 1803, these are clearly the causes: Napoleon’s ambitions were clear, his own alliance system with Spain held the dangers common to that alliance historically, and the French cowing of Prussia and Austria badly destabilised balance of power in the North European Plain. Napoleon’s own inability to come to terms with Britain came over his desire to crush it with the Continental System, an avowed use of a (militarily enforced) trade compact to leverage his enemy into favourable terms; Britain, knowing its own interests, and knowing its interest in trade and in the sale of the early fruits of the Industrial Revolution and in its trading colonies across the world, required breaking up this system rather than utilising it, refused to parlay.

In sum, Britain’s geographic position and advantages requires it to maintain access to trade, both selling and buying; it cannot brook disturbance of that access, and it cannot permit itself to be leveraged by imbalanced compact; and so it must pursue balance of power and a stasis of power following.

This is a guest essay by Owen Edwards, who writes over at The New Scrapbook. Subscribe below!