Abstract
European statesmen of the second half of the seventeenth century conducted their relationships with one another in an ever-changing and uncertain environment. The ‘turning points’ and ‘trends’ so often identified by modern historians were often difficult or impossible to detect at the time. Rumours based on inadequate or obsolete information could alter perceptions of other states’ actions; unexpected births, marriages, deaths or political upheavals could transform a state’s attitudes towards the European scene, or other states’ attitudes towards it. In these circumstances, it was difficult for any state or monarch to construct a long-term foreign policy based on fixed principles. These considerations affected Restoration Britain to a particularly marked extent. The Restoration itself, so rapid and unexpected from the viewpoints of almost all the courts of Europe, seemed to be further proof of the chronic political instability which had blighted the British kingdoms since 1640, and it immediately raised the question of the nature of the foreign policy which the new regime might pursue. The record of successive governments since the 1620s seemed to offer few clues. Over those four decades, British involvement in European politics had alternated between essentially isolationist (intentionally so in the 1630s, enforced in the 1640s) and erratically interventionist — disastrously so in the 1620s under James I and the Duke of Buckingham, but with dramatic effect in the 1650s, when the governments of the Commonwealth and Protectorate had aggressively deployed naval and land forces in a manner which both scared and impressed many European governments.
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Bibliography
Although any comprehensive study of Britain’s relation with foreign powers should ideally make use of primary material in foreign archives, a substantial amount can be gleaned from holdings in British repositories. Particularly important are the State Papers (Foreign) and the Baschet transcripts of French ambassadors’ despatches, both at the PRO, while the Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, publishes the Venetian ambassadors’ reports to 1675. The papers of several Secretaries of State and leading diplomats are also accessible: these include the Clifford papers relating to the Secret Treaty of Dover (BL Add. MSS 65 138), the papers of Henry Coventry (at Longleat House, but on microfilm as M/882 at the British Library) and, from the 1680s, papers relating to the careers of Lord Middleton, Sir William Trumbull and Lord Preston (respectively, BL Add. MSS 41 803–42; BL Add. MSS 34 799; HMC, Seventh Report, I 261–428). For the armed forces, by far the largest body of material on the navy can be found in the Admiralty papers at the PRO (especially in Adm 1, 2, 3 and 106), and the Navy Records Society has transcribed and published many of the sources for this period in other archives. The documentation relating to the army is less extensive, with the War Office papers at the PRO forming the major archive. A great deal of new work on international relations has appeared in recent years, much of it coming from the prolific pen of the leading authority in the field, Jeremy Black. His A System of Ambition? British Foreign Policy 1660–1793 (London, 1991, paperback) covers a wide range of contexts and has a substantial bibliography which contains a particularly useful list of Professor Black’s many other works. Other useful introductory surveys have been provided by
J. L. Price, ‘Restoration England and Europe’, in J. R. Jones (ed.), The Restored Monarchy 1660–1688 (London, 1979), pp. 118–35, and by
J. R. Jones himself in Britain and the World 1649–1815 (London, 1980). For the earlier period, older authorities such as
Sir Keith Feiling’s brilliant British Foreign Policy 1660–72 (London, 1930) and
Charles Wilson’s study of the first two Anglo-Dutch wars, Profit and Power: A Study of England and the Dutch Wars (London, 1957) still contain much valuable material but are becoming dated, particularly in the light of the work of Ronand Hutton (notably his ‘The Making of the Secret Treaty of Dover’, HJ, XXIX (1986) 297–318) and above all that of Steven Pincus. Dr Pincus’s ‘England and the World in the 1650s’, in J. Morrill (ed.), Revolution and Restoration (London, 1992, paperback), pp. 129–47, and his ‘Popery, Trade and Universal Monarchy: The Ideological Context of the Outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War’, EHR, CVII (1992) 1–29, are accessible introductions to his survey of foreign policy from 1650–68, Protestantism and Patriotism (Cambridge, 1996).
K. H. D. Haley’s An English Diplomat in the Low Countries: Sir William Temple and John de Witt, 1665–72 (Oxford, 1986) provides an excellent survey of relations with the Netherlands and of the methods employed in diplomacy. For any study of the latter theme, it should be supplemented by
G. H. Jones, Charles Middleton: The Life and Times of a Restoration Politician (Chicago, 1967), which also gives a good impression of the work of a Secretary of State. The tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 prompted a serious reassessment of Britain’s place on the international stage in the 1680s. A particularly important contribution was made by
Jeremy Black, ‘The Revolution and the Development of English Foreign Policy’ in E. Cruickshanks (ed.), By Force or By Default? The Revolution of 1688–9 (Edinburgh, 1989); other studies in the same field are enumerated in the notes to this chapter. Given the central place of the monarchs in the making of foreign policy, the recent biographies of both Charles II and James II assume a particular importance for any study of the subject.
R. Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland and Ireland (Oxford, 1989) and
J. Miller, Charles II (London, 1991) are both very thorough, but are more political histories than true biographies. They both devote much attention to foreign policy, making extensive use (for example) of the French ambassadors’ despatches; Miller has more on foreign affairs as a whole, but Hutton is better on Anglo-Spanish relations.
J. Miller, James II: A Study in Kingship, 2nd edn (London, 1989) gives similar treatment to the reign of James. Both of the armed forces have received serious treatment in print.
John Childs’s two books, The Army of Charles II (London, 1976) and The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester, 1979) provide detailed coverage of most aspects of the military. For the navy, my Gentlemen and Tarpaulins: The Officers and Men of the Restoration Navy (Oxford, 1991) is concerned primarily with naval personnel, but also looks at administrative and operational aspects, while ‘The Birth of the Imperial Navy? Aspects of English Naval Strategy c. 1650–90’, in
M. Duffy (ed.), Parameters of British Naval Power 1650–1850 (Exeter, 1992), pp. 14–38, considers strategic issues. Other important treatments of naval themes are
Sari Hornstein’s The Restoration Navy and English Foreign Trade 1674–88 (Aldershot, 1991), which provides an excellent survey of the navy’s activities in the Mediterranean, and
Jan Glete’s Navies and Nations: Warships, Navies and State Building in Europe, 1500–1860 (Stockholm, 1993), which employs an astonishing amount of data to construct a comparative analysis of the European navies in this period.
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© 1997 J. D. Davies
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Davies, J.D. (1997). International Relations, War and the Armed Forces. In: Glassey, L.K.J. (eds) The Reigns of Charles II and James VII & II. Problems in Focus Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25432-3_10
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