Britain: The European power

Dr. Brendan Simms, a colleague of mine, and the Newton Sheehy Teaching Fellow at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, has recently had published his latest book, entitled Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714-1783. Taking several years to research and complete, it is undoubtedly his longest tome, at approximately 230,000 words, or 802 pages, and charts the emergence of Britain as the dominant political, industrial and military power in Europe during the middling years of the eighteenth century.

The key argument in Three Victories and a Defeat is that contrary to popular belief—a belief which took a firm hold in the latter Victorian era with works such as Sir John Seely’s The Expansion of England—Britain has always been primarily a European power. While the eminence of its global reach cannot be denied, Britain’s grand strategy has always been to extend its security perimeter deep into what Dr. Simms calls the ‘Core of Europe’, that is to say, the Low Countries, the Holy Roman Empire, and surrounding areas. Additionally, he shows that geopolitics and the primacy of foreign policy trump domestic considerations in the driving forward of European history. It is worth citing him at some length, in order to explicate more thoroughly the evidence on which his synthesis is derived:

If eighteenth-century Britons were focussed on Europe, their primary preoccupation there was the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” (often referred to at the time simply as “Germany” or more commonly “the Empire”). In particular, they were concerned with the defence of the Low Countries: Flanders (which was part of the Holy Roman Empire) and the Dutch Republic. It was from Flemish ports that an invasion, by the Austrians, the French or (in earlier times) the Spanish, was most to be feared...Yet experience showed that the defence of Flanders, a territory over which British statesmen claimed joint sovereignty, necessitated a much broader strategic design for Europe. The Low Countries could not be defended by British forces alone, even with the support of the local population; the assistance of other major powers was required. For much of our period that power was Austria, and it therefore made sense to intervene in central Europe, militarily and diplomatically, in order to secure the House of Habsburg the necessary weight and resources to discharge that risk.

Moreover, the security of Flanders was inescapable from that of northern and north-western German, from whence it could be outflanked. The security of Britain thus rested on the management of the broader political commonwealth to which Flanders and its hinterland belonged: the German Empire. In short, even if the main threat came from further south, from Spain and especially France, Britain’s European policy was still first and foremost German policy. If the balance of power in Germany was overturned, then the European balance, and with it Britain’s continental bulwarks, would soon be in mortal danger. This would have been true even if the King of England had not been the Elector of the north German territory of Hanover. But it was also clear that in order to secure the Holy Roman Empire, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Balkans would need attention as well. It made sense, for example, to distract the Austrians in south-eastern Europe when they were a threat to the Empire, and to relieve them of French-inspired distractions there when they were not. Britons found that they could not conceive of Germany without thinking of Europe as a whole, and that they could not pursue a European policy without putting Europe at the heart of it.

The strategic and political centrality of eighteenth-century Britons was embedded in a shifting mental map. Their horizons gradually spread even further eastwards, northwards and southwards, as well as across the oceans. At the same time, British statesmen strove to maintain and deepen the cohesiveness of the United Kingdom and its overseas possessions upon which the effective exercise of military and political muscle depended. The domestic divisions within the British Isles, between Jacobites and supporters of the Protestant succession; between Whigs and Tories; between metropolis and colonial periphery; between king and ministers; and between individual members, were all part of this world-view. And no matter how hard they tried to insure against adversity, and anticipate new events, British statesmen, parliamentarians and the public knew that any number of strategic wild card—a diplomatic revolution, a lost battle, the sudden death of the monarch, a palace coup or rebellion—might overturn their calculations. For the individual, the price for failure in this environment might be loss of power, disgrace, imprisonment, and even execution; for the state it could be partition and even extinction.[1]

This new and powerful historical narrative has much resonance, even for today. Unfortunately, many Eurosceptics and Europhobes have long seen and continue to see Britain as at best peripheral to European affairs; they imagine that the United Kingdom has more important roles to perform overseas, that it is primarily a global power and international trading nation. Some even see British interests as being more closely aligned to those of the United States, and seem captured by the ‘American Dream’ in a way that even their forefathers might have had trouble coming to terms with. This is not to engage in self-referential and impoverished anti-Americanism, but rather to show that Europeans of all stripes and colours—particularly Britons—should look to themselves with confidence before looking at supposedly greener grass elsewhere. As is shown in Three Victories and a Defeat:

Indeed, much of the current British debate on Europe would have struck and informed eighteenth-century observer as remarkably familiar, if slightly the same. Should Britain engage militarily, politically and financially with Europe? Or should she look to her maritime destiny and seek her future with America? Was Britain politically and psychologically part of Europe, or in some way and island apart? These were questions which exercised Britons some three hundred years ago as much as they do today. On the one hand, there were those who were convinced that British security and prosperity could only be achieved through engagement in Europe. On the other hand, there was a vocal but increasingly important minority, who believed that the nation’s destiny lay in commercial, colonial and naval expansion. It is this strain which has been most audible in the past hundred and fifty years or so...The prevailing sense has been that English and then British history should be viewed in an insular and maritime context.[2]

However, as Dr. Simms points out, this perspective is mistaken, and is perhaps even antithetical to British interests:

To resist this confection is not to deny the importance of the navy, commerce and overseas empire in the development of modern Britain since 1700, or even earlier. All these dimensions need to be taken into account. Rather, it is to question the connections between these factors, and to suggest that a forward policy in Europe best secured Britain’s maritime predominance, whereas a narrow focus on ruling the waves was in fact the best way of losing them to her rivals. It is to recognise that the sea was not a bulwark at all. Rather it was a highway connecting Britain not only to the wider world, but more importantly to her immediate neighbours: a bridge, not a moat. “Rule Britannia” had it wrong: the “main” which mattered most to Britons was not the shimmering “Spanish main” of unlimited colonial opportunity, but the European “mainland” to which they belonged politically, if not geographically. In short, Britain’s first and most important lines of defence lay not in her “wooden walls”, but in Europe itself.[3]

The experiences and lessons learned during the period in question have often been forgotten—especially as peripheral and imperial concerns clouded British judgement during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Brendan Simms shows that by the middle of the eighteenth century, Britain had fostered a comprehensive and sophisticated set of assumptions which formed the prism through which London’s grand strategy was by and large directed:

By mid-century a coherent British strategic culture had emerged. It was firmly Eurocentric: it gave absolute priority to preventing the growth of a hegemon on the Continent. It was mainly, though not exclusively Whig: after all the arch-Whig in domestic matters, Robert Walpole, was something of a Tory in foreign policy. In this strategy political, diplomatic and fiscal instruments counted as much as military or naval ones; sometimes more so. It was restrained and conscious of the limits of British power. The colonial and naval spheres were subordinated to the Continental theatre; at the same time, the Continental strategy ensured continued naval superiority. Underpinning everything was a powerful sense of structure: Europe was conceived as an overall balance with a combination of regional balances. British statesmen thought and spoke of Europe in terms of “systems”, “barriers” and “natural allies”. Rather than being fixed on the “moat” of the surrounding “silver sea”, they conceived of the European mainland itself as an integral part of Britain’s defences—a “rampart”, just as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ancestors had before them.[4]

What is surprising is that this highly developed strategic culture was not to last very long. Having served Great Britain so successfully during the years in question, it began to break down after the Seven Years’ War. As Dr. Simms goes on to say:

After 1763, the Eurocentric strategic paradigm fragmented. It had long been under attack from those who believed in a more colonial and naval destiny for Britain. Insular rhetoric now became the prevailing tone in public...All this was accompanied by an over-reliance on naval deterrence. The navy had been a useful weapon, but there were limits to what it could achieve. France and Spain did not remain intimidated for long. Naval power could not prevent the occupation of Corsica in 1768 just as it was powerless to end covert and later open Bourbon assistance to the Americans...Of course, British strategic culture did not change overnight, British statesmen continued to see Europe as their primary focus, but they were now working within a context which was more stridently colonial and maritime than anything they had previously known.[5]

It is argued in Three Victories and a Defeat that this growing preoccupation with naval and colonial practice at the expense of European affairs led Britain to disaster during the Thirteen Colonies’ War of Independence in the 1770s and 1780s. Isolated in Europe and having made many enemies with aggressive naval expeditions in the years previous—enemies which were not settled or placated—Britain faced a huge alliance of hostile powers, which would eventually impress on the country to relinquish its first overseas colonial empire. Contrary to American national myths, it was not a ragtag gaggle of supposedly freedom-loving colonists in the New World that fought the ‘redcoats’ to gain their independence, but was rather the combined power of France, Spain and the Dutch who created a United States, having choked the sealanes and fed the Americans with supplies, soldiers and advice. The colonies were thus not lost in America, but in Europe.

Here, it is with the closing of the period under scrutiny that one detects a deeper play of irony and meaning in the title of Dr. Simms’ book. For the British defeat of 1783 was not only a defeat for British prestige, power and authority, but was also a defeat—even if not fully realised at the time—for the new ‘navalist’ strategic paradigm developed after the Seven Years’ War. The British victories in the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War, which helped to construct Britain’s highly sophisticated and Eurocentric strategic culture, were also swept away with the loss of the Thirteen Colonies. What is more, their loss did not teach late eighteenth-century Britons many lessons: While there was some movement back to a Eurocentric culture during the Napoleonic Wars, the navalist, globalist and colonialist imaginary regained its traction as the nineteenth century progressed, and perhaps culminated with the concept of ‘Splendid Isolation’, which turned out to be neither very splendid nor isolated, as the United Kingdom got sucked into Europe-centred world wars it had little power to prevent.

In any case, while an exemplary historical narrative and analysis in its own right, it is clear that Three Victories and a Defeat throws much light onto both British relations with the rest of Europe and the importance of the European Union to Britain in the modern world. A common strategy employed by British Eurosceptics and Europhobes like EU Referendum and Global Vision is to deny Britain’s European heritage and to present other Europeans as weak, irrelevant and Machiavellian, that is, plotting to undermine British customs and power. Another connected approach is to assert the primacy of Britain’s global connections and its relations with other parts of the so-called ‘Anglosphere’ of America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Anti-European arguments are pinned on the idea that Britain should withdraw from Europe, especially politically, and look across the seas, specifically North America. What Brendan Simms does is to show that this approach is not only historically dishonest, but that it has even been detrimental to British foreign policy and grand strategy. Britain has always been, and is first and foremost, a European power.

The governing idea of Britain’s first eighteenth-century strategic culture was to prevent the emergence of a European hegemon; it has never been in British interests to allow the development of a European Leviathan, which could gain the power to invade and occupy the British homeland. Britain has always sought to prevent universal sovereignty on the European mainland, whether Spanish, Austrian, French, German, Nazi or Soviet. Today, out of the ashes of World War II and the Cold War, a new universal order has emerged, which is even more extensive than that of Imperial Rome. The European Union spreads from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic to the Russian rimlands. What is different is that this hegemon has Britain at its heart. This means that the United Kingdom must engage far more in contemporary European affairs, particularly given that British economic and demographic power are projected to surge ahead of every other European Union Member State over the next thirty years. To reject the rest of Europe—which still contains the greatest concentration of wealth and resources in the world—in favour of any alternative like the fanciful ‘Anglosphere’ would be pure folly. As the European Union’s Member State with the greatest military power, Britain should thrust its full weight into the enterprise of European integration, helping to fashion the European Union into a superpower, able to speak as the equal of any giant, today or tomorrow.

This is perhaps Dr. Simms’ most important conclusion: It is only through exercising influence on the continent of which Britain is a part—today meaning the European Union—that the United Kingdom can effectively exercise global power. Extrapolated, it is only by gaining greater leverage over the nascent European government in Brussels that British interests can be protected, defended and extended in partnership with other Europeans, particularly Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands. Moreover, given the rapid rise of China, the aggressive re-emergence of Russia and the infiltration of Islamism into the rimlands around the European Union, it is only through pooling power and compentences at the European level that Britons and other Europeans will be able to protect themselves and shape the world of tomorrow. The real guardians of British—and of course, European—interests are not therefore the globalists, Eurosceptics and the Europhobes, but the Europeanists. Three Victories and a Defeat ends with a powerful statement, which contemporary Britons would do well to remember (pointer: Brussels is located in the middle of Flanders):

Britain’s security depended on maintaining her “ramparts” in Europe. It was there, in Germany and Flanders, in the “counterscarp” of England, that Britain’s fate would be decided, always had been and always would be.[6]

And if Britain’s ‘ramparts’ have long been in Flanders, the European Union’s ‘ramparts’ are also further afield. The ‘counterscarp’ of Europe reaches out and spans the European Neighbourhood, pressing deeply into the great residual space we should define as the European Union’s ‘Grand Area’, which includes Russia, Central Asia, the broader Middle East and Africa, as well as East Asia. We Europeans need to foster a sophisticated grand strategy to enable our exercising of influence over these geographical spaces, not only for the sake of our collective security and defence, but also for our social cohesion and to facilitate the production of our industrial power and economic wealth.

• Click here to see Nick Cohen’s review of Three Victories and a Defeat in today’s edition of The Observer.

[1] Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat (London, 2007), pp. 4-5.
[2] Ibid., p. 2.
[3] Ibid., p. 3.
[4] Ibid., pp. 673-674.
[5] Ibid., p. 676.
[6] Ibid., p. 684.