The significance of british policy towards spain in 1859-1868

Abstract

This thesis falls into two distinct sections. The first deals with British policy towards Spain as an Iberian power. This study confirms the impression that Britain's policy of non-intervention was still primarily a means of maintaining Spanish independence. Between 1856 and 1863 this policy lost the constitutionalist implications given it by Palmerston. The consequent withdrawal of Great Britain from all part in Spanish politics reflects her general withdrawal from European affairs. With regard to Spanish-Portuguese relations, Britain's policy of non-intervention was applied to maintain the territorial and dynastic status quo in the Peninsula. In the second section Spain is considered as a Mediterranean and World power. Great Britain wished to see her no weaker than she was in 1859. An examination of her policy confirms the consistency with which, in this period of expanding markets, Britain was concerned with the security of her Trade Routes, and with preventing any power from gaining a monopoly over such strategic areas as the Straits of Gibraltar, the Isthmus of Suez, and the Caribbean Sea. Her policy of trying to prevent interruptions of her trade, of maintaining the 'open door', and advocating free trade, governed her attitude to such Spanish enterprises as the Wars against Morocco and the South American Republics, the annexation of San Domingo and Spanish activities on the West Coast of Africa while her policy towards Cuba reveals the strength and limitations of her policy of suppressing the Slave Trade. The material has been found in the Foreign Office records in the private papers of Russell, Hammond and Clarendon in the Public Record Office, and of Gladstone and Layard in the British Museum.