7 The Treaty of Utrecht and Addison’s Cato: Britain’s War of the Spanish Succession, Peace and the Imperial Road Map (original) (raw)
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This chapter provides a new interpretation of early 18th Century British grand strategy formation, its institutionalisation in the Peace of Utrecht (1713), and its impact on post-conflict 18th C international order from within the discipline of International Relations. The historical argument is that 'Utrecht' codified a new and unique type of British grand strategy-the dual 'blue-water policy'-for the geopolitical management of European international relations and beyond. It cleaved into a defensive policy towards the Continent, involving the 'rationalisation' , i.e. de-ideologisation, deconfessionalisation, and de-territorialisation of Britain's continental objectives, plus the invention and active manipulation of power balancing towards continental rivals; and an offensive policy overseas, expressed in the unilateral pursuit of oceanic mercantile primacy. This strategy was grounded in an altered institutional foreign policy context-the post-1688 'revolution in foreign affairs'-subsequent to constitutional changes in the British polity during the 17th C Revolution. The British peace plan, enacted at Utrecht, constitutes a sui generis phenomenon that cannot be exhaustively captured with prevailing IR concepts, including hegemony, formal or informal imperialism, automatic power-balancing, international society, collective security, or hierarchy. Theoretically, the chapter adopts a historicist method to re-craft attempts within critical International Historical Sociology in the direction of a Historical Sociology of International Politics to escape the structuralist-functionalist trap.
1979
for giving me permission to use the results of his research into the numbers of effective troops sent into different theatres of the war which he included in his unpublished thesis, 'The Secretary of War and the Administration of the Army during the War of the Spanish Succession 1 , (University of London, 1960). Mr. Martin Gilbert of Merton College, Oxford, very iv kindly allowed me to read in his home several files relating to Marlborough that were among the Churchill Papers from Chartwell in his custody. A number of scholars and specialists have given me general guidance. Professor R. M. Hatton of the London School of Economics pointed out to me the importance of Dutch and German writing and made some very useful criticisms of my projected plan of study.