Featured
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.
Fyodor Dostoevsky listened with growing bewilderment to the celebrity peace activists gathered in Geneva.
On September 9th-12th, 1867, some of the noisiest political activists of the day, including Mikhail Bakunin, Karl Marx, Victor Hugo and Guiseppi Garibaldi, gathered in Geneva for the inaugural Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom. In a letter to his niece, Sofia Alexandrovna, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky complained that they had a peculiar notion of peace.
The diplomat’s task is to see the best in other peoples, not to scold them for their failings.
François de Callières, a diplomat in the service of King Louis XIV of France, believed that those posted to overseas embassies should not only show but feel respect for their host country. Given the way that all of us now live in one another’s pockets through the internet, and our much-vaunted democratic government, everyone should heed his advice, for we are all diplomats now.
John Bright dismissed fears that digging a tunnel under the English Channel would encourage a French invasion.
In the 1880s, when the idea of a Channel Tunnel was being seriously considered in Parliament, senior ministers warned anxiously and apparently seriously of the dangers of encouraging a French invasion. John Bright, who as President of the Board of Trade had been strongly in favour of the project, made no attempt to conceal his scorn when he spoke to constituents in Birmingham on June 15th, 1883.
Richard Cobden wondered how the architects of the British Empire had the nerve to accuse Russia of imperialism.
In 1854, British feeling was running high against Russia. That March, Britain had sided with Turkey in the Crimean War of 1853-56, and anxious journalists and politicians pointed accusing fingers at Russia’s military manoeuvres around the Baltic and the Black Sea, scolding her for her greed and disrespect for her neighbours’ sovereignty. Richard Cobden wondered if there was something amiss with his hearing.
Richard Cobden deplored the way that politicians in Britain justified their wars abroad by portraying other countries as barbarous and backward.
In 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors on a ship out of Macau that was flying British colours, albeit without a current licence. The sailors were released but the British went ahead and bombarded Canton for three weeks anyway, saying that force was all the Chinese understood. Richard Cobden protested in the House of Commons.
Richard Cobden wanted to know why British policy towards China was so different to our policy towards the USA and European powers.
On October 8th, 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors for piracy. Sir John Bowring, governor of Hong Kong, demanded their release, as their ship the Arrow had flown (albeit illegally) a British flag. On the 22nd the obliging Chinese delivered the suspects up; on the 23rd, the Royal Navy nonetheless began a three-week bombardment of Canton. The following February, Richard Cobden expressed his outrage in the Commons.