ABSTRACT
The Whigs adopted a foreign policy of continental commitment in contrast to the Tory blue-water strategy. Whig continental commitment was as much ideological opposition to the spread of absolutism as it was geopolitical opposition to French imperialism. The Whigs were convinced that Louis XIV was a great and powerful enemy who could only be stopped by reversing his continental expansion. For the Whigs Louis XIV and the spread of absolutism needed to be halted and turned back on the continent. Robert Molesworth was not the only Whig to argue that absolutism demanded militarization and unending warfare. In fact, Molesworth's dynamic and influential tract attracted so much interest both in England and on the continent because it was part of a desperate attempt by Whigs to regain the initiative in the making of English foreign policy. From the moment that James II left England in 1688 Englishmen and women were deeply divided about the aims and purposes of English foreign policy.
