History of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom

The history of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom covers English, British, and United Kingdom's foreign policy from about 1500 to 2000. For the current situation since 2000 see foreign relations of the United Kingdom.

Britain from 1750 to the 1910s took pride in an unmatched economic base; comprising industry, finance, shipping and trade that largely dominated the globe. Foreign policy based on free trade (from the 1840 to 1920s) kept the economy flourishing. The overseas First British Empire was devastated by the loss of the thirteen American colonies in a war when Britain had no major allies. The Second British Empire was built fresh in Asia and Africa and reached its zenith in the 1920s. Foreign policy made sure it was never seriously threatened. The Statute of Westminster granted effective independence to the Empire's long self governing Dominions in 1931. Starting with India in 1947, independence movements took off in nearly every colony so that most had achieved independence by the 1960s with only a small handful left by the 1970.

Peace was the usual pattern, but there was at times major conflict, particularly against France from the 1790s to 1815, after which Britain would not fight another war on the European soil until World War I, with victory achieved at enormous cost. After expending enormous energy on the defeat of the First French Empire and Napoleon (1793–1815), British policy focused on achieving a conservative balance of power within Europe, with no one country achieving dominance over the affairs of the continent. This had been the basic reason behind the British wars against Napoleon, and in the view of some, Germany in World War I. The chief enemy down to 1815 was France, with its much larger population base and its powerful army. The Royal Navy was a decisive advantage. The British were generally highly successful in their wars, with possibly the only notable exception being the American War of Independence (1775–1784).[1]

A favoured diplomatic strategy was subsidising the armies of continental allies, such as the Kingdom of Prussia, thereby turning London's enormous financial power to military advantage. Britain relied heavily on the Royal Navy for security, seeking to keep it the most powerful fleet afloat with a full complement of bases across the globe. British dominance of the seas was vital to the formation of the British Empire, which was achieved through the maintenance of a Navy larger than the next two largest Navies combined for the majority of the 19th and early 20th centuries, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II. The British controlled the oceans. So powerful was the Royal Navy, it needed to do little actual fighting from 1812 to 1914. Although all of the other great powers fought with their neighbours, the British Army had only one relatively limited war (the Crimean War against the Russian Empire in 1854–56). The Army mostly handled garrison duty, and did have to deal with localized insurrections and colonial conflicts in Asia and Africa.

For a capsule guide to the wars, see list of wars involving the United Kingdom.

  1. ^ See Jeremy Black, "Could the British Have Won the American War of Independence?."Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. (Fall 1996), Vol. 74 Issue 299, pp 145–154. online 90-minute video lecture given at Ohio State in 2006; requires Real Player