ABSTRACT
Viscount Palmerston dominated British foreign policy in this period. He was Foreign Secretary for fifteen of the twenty-five years from 1830 until he became Prime Minister in 1855. As Prime Minister for almost ten years – with only a sixteen-month gap filled by Derby’s minority government in 1858 –59 – until his death in 1865 he was still the dominant force in British diplomacy. It is not for longevity that he is remembered, however, but for style. As a Liberal-Tory near the beginning of his political career, he had learned many political lessons from George Canning (see Chapters 17 and 18), including the value of publicity to explain his policies directly to the electorate, either in speeches or via newspapers. Like Canning, Palmerston stressed the importance of maintaining British interests, especially in Europe where the aftershocks from the Napoleonic Wars still produced disturbing eruptions. His methods were controversial. He was accused of making diplomacy, traditionally a closed, secretive affair carried on between small numbers of national leaders and senior officials, into a matter for dangerously open public debate.
