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Bentham versus Pitt: Jeremy Bentham and British Foreign Policy 1789*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Stephen Conway
Stephen Conway
Affiliation:
University College London
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 791 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

1 Bentham's attack on Pitt has been noticed by several Bentham specialists. See particularly, Schwarzenberger, Georg, ‘Bentham's contribution to international law and organization’, Keeton, George W. and Schwarzenberger, Georg (eds.), Jeremy Bentham and the law: a symposium (London, 1948), pp. 173–4Google Scholar; Stark, Werner (ed.), Jeremy Bentham's economic writings (3 vols., London, 1952–1954), I, 38–48Google Scholar; Mack, Mary, Jeremy Bentham: an odyssey of ideas 1748–1792 (London, 1962), pp. 398–400Google Scholar; Burns, J. H., ‘Bentham and the French Revolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series xvi (1966), 101Google Scholar.

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3 British Library shelf no. CT 57(2). A fragmentary draft for the first Anti-Machiavel, dating from early June 1789 (Bentham MSS UC clxix. 163) mentions the ‘harmless reveries of Sir John Dalrymple’. By this Bentham almost certainly meant Dalrymple's Queries, which had been published by April 1789 (see the contributions on the Prussian Alliance in The Public Advertiser in April 1789 – apparently by Dalrymple himself-announcing the appearance of the Queries). Bentham had therefore probably read the Queries by early June 1789. But his annotations seem to be of a later date. On page 49 of his copy he made reference to his own ‘Plan for perpetual peace’, which, as I shall try to show, grew out of his criticism of Pitt's foreign policy.

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57 Ibid. p. 109.

58 The changes in the title of the proposed pamphlet give some impression of the development of his ideas. At various times it was to be called: ‘A protest against Machiavelism or considerations on the conduct of the British cabinet toward foreign states’ (Bentham MSS UC xxv. 123); ‘International principles and measures’, ‘New principles and measures respecting distant dependencies and foreign politics’ (ibid. p. 134); ‘Mischief of foreign dependencies and alliances plan for peace and economy’ (ibid. p. 106).

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