Jeremy Black. Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xiii + 261 pp. $70.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-83331-8.
Reviewed by Paddy McNally (Department of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University College Worcester)
Published on H-Albion (May, 2005)
Masters of War
Arguably, the most significant consequences of the Glorious Revolution were the transformation in the status of the Westminster Parliament and the "revolution" in English foreign policy. While after 1689 Parliament became an "institution" rather than an "event," the reigns of William III and Anne saw England (after 1707 Britain) transformed from being a second-rate power on the periphery of European affairs into an integral player in European diplomacy and a major world power. Jeremy Black's latest book attempts to analyze how the emergence of Parliament as a key factor in the British political system impacted the development of foreign policy from 1688 to 1800.
Eighteenth-century specialists will be familiar with Black's considerable body of previous work focusing primarily on British and European diplomacy and warfare. The work under review, however, is to be welcomed as an attempt to analyze how the twin "revolutions" in foreign policy and domestic politics interacted. It has long been clear that the determination of William III to involve England in continental affairs was a major reason for the emergence of Parliament as a powerful and permanent institution, primarily due to the financial consequences of engagement in lengthy and costly European warfare. In other words, the link between the diplomatic, financial, and constitutional revolutions was explicit. Black's purpose, however, is to examine the extent to which Parliament's control over government finance (the "sinews of war") and its status as the representative of public opinion enabled it to exert influence over the direction of British foreign policy.
On the face of it, there is little evidence of a direct increase in parliamentary control of foreign affairs. Black produces very few instances (the Nootka Sound Crisis of 1790 being a notable exception) where ministries were compelled to bow to parliamentary opinion. This is not especially surprising given the power of the British executive over the composition of Parliament in the eighteenth century. Queen Anne, for example, was able to overcome the Lords' disquiet over the proposed terms of the Treaty of Utrecht by creating twelve new peers in 1711, as Black notes. What he makes clear, however, is that from the 1690s governments were forced to take parliamentary (and public) opinion into account in the pursuit of foreign policy. While the formal constitutional powers of the monarch and his/her ministers to direct diplomacy and warfare were unaffected by the revolution of 1688-89, Parliament's grip on the public purse necessitated that governments proceeded with caution. This, of course, was nothing new. As Black points out "in so far as governmental initiatives in the field of foreign policy were affected by Parliament, they were checked, when Parliament was in session, more frequently prior to 1689 than after it" (p. 38). The qualification, however, is critical. Due to the financial settlement of 1689 and the establishment of a significant (and as it turned out, permanent) national debt in the 1690s, William III and his successors (unlike Charles II or James II) were never in a position even to contemplate ruling without Parliament.
The overriding impression gained from Black's analysis of government-Parliament relations regarding foreign affairs in the eighteenth century is of an essentially compliant legislature. Members of Parliament were seriously disadvantaged when attempting to challenge ministerial authority in this sphere. In addition to opening themselves up to accusations of being "unpatriotic," most peers and MPs simply lacked adequate information with which to challenge the authority of the government. The refusal of successive governments to disclose "sensitive" information to Parliament (diplomatic correspondence and secret clauses of treaties, for example) meant that opposition politicians normally lacked the information to question effectively government policy. Ministers were also able to imply (with some justification) that parliamentary "interference" in diplomatic matters was liable to act against the national interest. As a result, only those determined to utilize any opportunity to embarrass a ministry were likely to support enquiries or criticisms of particular policies. Unsurprisingly, governments were most vulnerable when negotiations with foreign powers appeared to impact upon particular economic interests.
The strength of this book is its analysis of foreign policy in the reigns of William III, Anne, and the first two Georges. Thereafter, the narrative loses momentum. It was especially surprising, for example, that parliamentary responses to the background to and progress of the American War of Independence merited barely three pages. Moreover, having hitherto followed a chronological structure, chapter six offers an analysis of the utility of relevant source materials for the study of eighteenth-century parliamentary politics. While valuable in itself, this chapter sits uneasily within this text. This chapter is followed by one devoted to the "Character and quality of parliamentary discussion" which similarly sheds little light on the relationship between Parliament and foreign policy. Chapter 8 ("A parliamentary foreign policy?") tends to revisit the material contained in chapters 1 to 5. The more analytical passages here might well have been more effectually incorporated into the earlier discussion.
Perhaps the most intriguing question raised by this work is the "indirect" influence of Parliament in the development of British foreign policy. The relative lack of overt conflicts between legislature and executive over foreign policy in this period, after all, may have been primarily due to the sensitivity of successive monarchs and ministers to parliamentary opinion. The influence of extra-parliamentary opinion, on the other hand, is barely touched upon in this work. Black implies that the significance of such "out of doors" opinion, while significant, has been exaggerated (p. 7). For the earlier part of the century this may well be true. However, the expansion of the popular press and pamphleteering and the growing significance of radical politics from the 1760s suggest that the dividing line between popular and parliamentary opinion regarding foreign affairs may well have been less clear-cut than the author implies.
Finally, the author's preface implies that this study has relevance for the role of the Westminster Parliament in the decision of the British government to engage in the recent conflict in Iraq. More generally, Professor Black suggests that his book relates to the "question of the effectiveness of democratic states when confronting authoritarian rivals" (p. ix). While the decision of the Labour government to seek parliamentary approval for the invasion of Iraq is clearly of interest to historians of the British constitution and, more especially, the royal prerogative, the relevance of eighteenth-century British foreign policy (and Parliament's limited role in its formulation) to recent events is not readily apparent to this reviewer. Certainly the connection, having been raised in the preface, remains unexplored thereafter.
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Citation:
Paddy McNally. Review of Black, Jeremy, Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Eighteenth Century.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10530
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