135. Peace with honour
A History of England26 Maalis 2023

135. Peace with honour

We start this episode with a Russian army north of Constantinople ready to invade the city, and a British naval squadron in the waters to its south ready – or at least apparently ready – to resist it. In the end, it was the Russians who blinked. With war avoided, the Berlin Congress of all the European Great Powers met and left Russia with a much reduced list of gains from its war against Turkey, than it had try to secure in the Treaty of San Stefano.

Disraeli and Salisbury conducted preliminary negotiations to ensure that they had commitments to the outcome they wanted before even going into the Congress. That allowed Disraeli to proclaim on his return that he had won ‘Peace with Honour’. In his case, that was probably true, which can’t be said of many of the people who’ve used the expression since.

The Congress was the major and substantial foreign policy achievement of a premiership which had also contained some earlier symbolic successes, such as the purchase of Suez Canal shares and the granting to Victoria of the title ‘Empress of India’. For now, the only shadow was Disraeli’s own health, that drove him in tiredness from the stressful environment of the Commons to the calmer waters of the Lords.

Finally, the episode talks of the appointment of a bookseller as First Lord of the Admiralty, and how that fed into the glorious Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, HMS Pinafore.



Illustration: Detail from a publicity poster for Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. Public domain

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.


Jaksot(274)

265. War in a unipolar world

265. War in a unipolar world

By the latter part of the twentieth century, the world had become unipolar. The Soviet Empire collapsed even more rapidly than the British one had after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. China was not yet...

26 Loka 202514min

264. Ethics, votes and wars

264. Ethics, votes and wars

We saw in the last episode, that Britain’s involvement in the NATO intervention in Kosovo could be regarded as part of an ‘ethical foreign policy’, since its objective, many felt, was humanitarian, th...

12 Loka 202514min

263. Tragedy at home, ethics abroad

263. Tragedy at home, ethics abroad

Divorce, contrary to what many believe, was not permitted by the Church of England. Henry VIII didn’t divorce two wives, he had the marriages annulled, declaring in effect that they’d never happened. ...

5 Loka 202514min

262. Uncool

262. Uncool

In the early years of Blair’s premiership, his supporters liked to refer to Britain as ‘Cool Britannia’, in a play on the title of the song ‘Rule Britannia’. Last week, we talked about some of the coo...

28 Syys 202514min

261. Cool Britannia

261. Cool Britannia

The Blair government threw itself into action as soon as it was formed.Rather confirming the existence of a deal between them, something they’ve never confirmed, Blair quickly appointed Gordon Brown C...

21 Syys 202514min

260. New Dawn

260. New Dawn

It was a new dawn. Or at least so Tony Blair said, as he emerged from his landslide victory in the 1997 General Election. It’s what he would say, isn’t it?Still, there was some truth to the claim. It ...

14 Syys 202514min

259. Major error, major success, Major’s out

259. Major error, major success, Major’s out

We’re just about ready to move on from John Major but, before we do, we need to spend a few moments on two major events of his second premiership. One was a significant breakthrough, in Ireland, even ...

7 Syys 202514min

258. Major’s bastards and Labour’s deal

258. Major’s bastards and Labour’s deal

By winning the 1992 general election, John Major had gained his own mandate to form a government, instead of imply inheriting Margaret Thatcher’s. He’d shown himself capable of leading the Conservativ...

31 Elo 202514min

Suosittua kategoriassa Historia

olipa-kerran-otsikko
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
mayday-fi
huijarit
rss-ikiuni
mystista
tsunami
konginkangas
totuus-vai-salaliitto
rouva-diktaattori
rss-kirkon-ihmeellisimmat-tarinat
rss-i-dont-like-mondays-2
apinan-vuosi
rss-subjektiivinen-todistaja
sotaa-ja-historiaa-podi
historiaa-suomeksi
rss-peter-peter
rss-sattuu-sita-suomessakin
tiedetta-ja-sirkushuveja-vanhojen-aikojen-podcast
matakuu