ABSTRACT
Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 as a joint architect of the Vienna peace settlement and master of the world's largest empire. This was the last fate anyone would have predicted for it in 1785. Recent defeat at the hands of revolutionary America, aided by a Bourbon France seeking revenge for the humiliations it had suffered during the Seven Years War, had reduced Britain to the ranks of a second-class power saddled with a £242.9m war debt and no allies in Europe. Eight years later, when Britain went to war with revolutionary France, much had been done to revive its international standing and it has been customary to attribute this to the diplomatic and economic policies of the Younger Pitt. When subjected to critical assessment, the successes of Pitt's first decade in office can be attributed as much to fortuitous economic and diplomatic conditions as to prudent and far-sighted policy. Neither the signature of an Anglo-French 'free trade' treaty in 1786, by which England and France agreed to accept each other's exports on a most favoured nations status, nor the establishment of the Consolidated Fund for the redemption of the national debt, in themselves rejuvenated the British economy, though they did much to establish domestic financial and commercial confidence in Pitt. The 1788 Triple Alliance between Britain, Prussia and the United Provinces was the product not of superior British diplomacy during the 1787 Dutch Patriot revolt, but rather of French executive paralysis stemming from the breakdown of relations between crown and nobility coupled with Frederick William II of Prussia's desire to find western European support for his designs upon Poland (Black, 1990: 223-33, 1994; Murphy, 1982: 432-5; Schama, 1977: 25—75, 79-135; Blanning, 1986: 54-72; Henderson, 1987-8, 1990).
