Bentham versus Pitt

Jeremy Bentham and British Foreign Policy 1789

Bibliographic Data

ID8958437
AuthorsStephen Conway (University College London, corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume30
Issue4
Pages791-809
Publication date1987-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Historical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0018246x00022329
OpenAlexW2153018125
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited13

The successes and failures of British foreign policy from the end of the American war of independence until the outbreak of the conflict with revolutionary France will be familiar, at least in outline, to many students of late-eighteenth-century history. In 1783 Britain was widely regarded as having been reduced to the status of a second-rank power. British ministers, and especially Pitt the Younger and his first foreign secretary, the marquess of Carmarthen, sought a European alliance to end their country's isolation and vulnerability. The Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786, the product of French rather than British pressure, was of little help in this respect, as it never developed beyond a limited trade agreement. Negotiations for similar reciprocal commercial concessions with other powers all proved fruitless. In 1787 and 1788, however, political and military arrangements were concluded with the Dutch and the Prussians after Prussian troops – with British encouragement and support – had intervened in the United Provinces to secure the position of the house of Orange and to crush the pro-French ‘Patriot’ party. Fortified by this new British – Prussian – Dutch connexion, or Triple Alliance as it was called, Pitt's government was able to exert considerable influence in Europe and farther afield. In 1788, when the Swedes attacked Russia, which was already at war with the Turks, Denmark, in accordance with its treaty obligations to Russia, invaded Sweden. The British and Prussians threatened the Danes and forced them to withdraw. A few months later, in April 1789, renewed Anglo-Prussian pressure compelled Denmark to maintain a strict neutrality in the continuing Russo-Swedish conflict. In 1790 the British were just as successful in a confrontation with Spain over the Nootka Sound in North America. Only when the government backed down during the dispute with Russia over possession of the Turkish fortress of Ochakov on the Black Sea coast, were the limits of British power fully exposed

Alliance · Economic history · Foreign policy · Independence (probability theory · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Treaty · American Constitutional Law and Politics · European Political History Analysis · History · Law

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