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British Diplomacy and the German Problem, 1848-1850*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

William J. Orr Jr.
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Extract

Throughout much of the nineteenth century relations between Britain and Germany were blessed not only by the absence of any fundamental conflicts of national interest, but also by positive factors tending to encourage friendly ties. Memories of the common struggle against Napoleon, the predominantly Protestant character of tioth countries, and the marriage of Queen Victoria to a German prince all suggested a natural affinity between them. German liberals and conservatives alike found much to admire in English political institutions, while Englishmen in turn approved the steps, however halting, by which many of the German states adopted constitutions and representative institutions.

During the late 1840s British statesmen did appear to have recognized the benefits that would accrue for Britain through consolidation of the German Confederation, and there was also some discussion regarding the prospect of an Anglo-Prussian alliance. After 1846, thanks to Palmerston's stridency in the affair of the Spanish marriages, Britain lost the good will of France and thus remained diplomatically isolated in the face of the powerful conservative coalition of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , Fall 1978, pp. 209 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1978

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Footnotes

*

The first serious studies of this subject were German works written after the First World War: Hans Precht, Englands Stellung zur deutschen Einheit, 1848-1850 (Munich and Berlin, 1925), and Alexander Scharff, Die europäischen Grossmächte und die deutsche Revolution, 1848-1851 (Leipzig, 1942). Both books, reflecting the suspicions of Britain shared by many Germans during this period, stress British reservations about German unification and dwell upon British hostility to the cause of Schleswig-Holstein. Both depended entirely upon German archives. More recently, however, W.E. Mosse, The European Powers and the German Question, 1848-1871 (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 13-31, suggested that the British attitude toward Germany was hardly so negative as earlier German accounts suggested. This conclusion is bolstered in Günther Gillessen, Lord Palmerston und die Einigung Deutschlands (Lübeck and Hamburg, 1961), a work based on the hitherto neglected resources of the Public Record Office. Gillessen's otherwise impressive work, however, has two limitations: it did not use the still available materials in German archives, and its account of many key aspects and developments of the crucial Schleswig-Holstein problem is inadequate. Frank G. Weber, “Palmerston and Prussian Liberalism 1848,” The Journal of Modern History, 35 (1963): 125-136, provides an interesting account of Anglo-Prussian relations in the period preceding and immediately following the March Revolution.