ABSTRACT
In a world untroubled by conflict between the Great Powers, the minor warships of the Royal Navy were force enough to oversee British interest abroad. British foreign policy in the Age of Palmerston saw the navy and its officers as peace keepers. Palmerston hoped the circumstances of the Crimean War would mean that British people opinion and Parliament, would now sustain him in a more aggressive policy towards the United States. Distracting the European powers from affairs in Central America, the war against Russia allowed Britain to mobilise and modernise its war machine, a tool which could be wielded overseas without the long dreaded interference from France, which was for the moment at least a fully committed wartime ally. The era of gunboat diplomacy ended in the Africa of the later nineteenth century under the combined impact of international rivalry and internal decay.
