ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the foreign policy and the Tories, from the development of effective two-party politics after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 to the crisis created by the increasing radicalism of the French Revolution. Prior to the 1790s, the Tory world can be seen in terms of linked views on domestic and international politics, each of which helped define foreign policy. The lack of Tory sympathy for the Protestants persecuted by Catholic powers was a theme in Whig papers, and also led to legal action against Tory journalists. Tory views also affected views of particular powers, as with their strong anti-Dutch attitude. Maritime war helped provide a different Tory thesis. This thesis was certainly not that of isolationism, but it was of a distancing from the Williamite and Whig focus on the Low Countries. The Tory approach therefore was one that queried the mechanistic clarity and systemic certainty that tended to characterise Whig accounts.
