International Relations
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘International Relations’
Richard Cobden asked Parliament to make a better effort to understand the Russian mindset.
Back in 1801, Napoleon almost persuaded Tsar Paul I to invade India. Further lobbying fell on deaf ears but many in London still believed Russia was poised to invade India, and even Western Europe. After pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan (1838-42) and the Crimea (1853-56), Richard Cobden urged Westminster to get to know Russia better.
Adam Smith could not imagine it would ever happen, but he nevertheless recommended that Britain grant independence to her colonies.
Scottish economist Adam Smith regarded the British Empire as the best of its kind in history, but he still believed that it would be better for everyone if London abandoned her single market and meddlesome governance, and granted her colonies independence.
Richard Cobden despaired at British statesmen using the peerless Royal Navy merely to strangle trade in other countries.
The Victorian era saw Britain abandon its colonial ‘single market’ in favour of much greater free trade, but Richard Cobden was not yet satisfied. He urged Parliament to stop using the navy to blockade the ports of its commercial and political rivals – in modern terms, to stop imposing sanctions and punitive tariffs.
Richard Cobden saw Britain’s international standing in terms of peaceful trade rather than military interventions.
In 1855, Cobden urged Parliament to tone down its anti-Russian rhetoric, not out of any fondness for St Petersburg’s domestic or foreign policy but because British influence was better felt in industrial innovation and international trade than in annexing land, toppling governments or rattling the Russian bear’s cage.
Lord Salisbury seeks to calm the Viceroy of India’s nerves in the face of anti-Russian hysteria.
In 1877, military advisers urged Britain to ready themselves for war against the Russian Empire, citing St Petersburg’s diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, and warning that the Russians ‘could’ invade Turkey or even India. Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, wrote to the Viceroy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, urging calm.
Lord Salisbury tells his fellow statesmen that no country should have its laws dictated from abroad.
In 1863, Copenhagen announced the first joint Constitution for Denmark and the Danish King’s duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Amid rising German nationalism, Prussia demanded the two duchies for the German Confederation, and invaded in February 1864. London hosted a meaningless Conference, and that August the Danes gave in.