2005 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKHISTHistory0018-2648 2005 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.July 2005903Original ArticleBRITAIN and EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURYSTEPHEN CONWAY
Continental Connections: Britain and Europe
in the Eighteenth Century
STEPHEN CONWAY
University College London
Abstract
The topic of empire has loomed large in recent writings on eighteenth-century Britain.
This article attempts to encourage greater appreciation of Britain's multifarious connections
with continental Europe in this period. It also seeks to establish that empire and
Europe were seen by many Britons as complementary rather than competing areas of
interest and engagement.
T
o claim that the burial records of eighteenth-century Falmouth
make fascinating reading would be going too far, but they certainly
contain some surprises. The list of mainly Cornish-sounding names
is interrupted in 1739 by entries for three Dutchmen. Another Dutchman
was buried in Falmouth the following year; sixteen Frenchmen in 1744,
and nine more in 1745. Over the next thirty-five years, more deceased
Dutch and French make a fleeting appearance, together with smaller
numbers of Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Germans and Italians.1 The
records give no clues as to why they were in Falmouth. At least some of
them were probably prisoners of war and most of the rest were almost
certainly mariners.
This glimpse into life ­ or rather death ­ in Falmouth is suggestive of
some of the continental connections of a modest English coastal town.
Yet recent historical scholarship on eighteenth-century Britain has for
the most part been much more interested in the impact of empire than in
links with the rest of Europe. Very different historians, approaching the
subject from a variety of angles, have stressed the importance of Britain's
overseas possessions to domestic developments. Peter Marshall has
I am grateful for permission to quote from the manuscript collections cited in subsequent footnotes.
I also wish to acknowledge my thanks to Reider Payne for information on material in the
Lambeth Palace Library, and to Peter Marshall and Julian Hoppit for advice and encouragement.
A shorter version of this article was delivered as an inaugural lecture at University College London
in March 2004.
1 The Register of Baptisms, Marriages and Burials of the Parish of Falmouth in the County of Cornwall,
1663­1812, pt. ii, ed. Susan Elizabeth Gay and Mrs Howard Fox (Devon and Cornwall Record
Society, Exeter, 1915), pp. 768­862.
354 BRITAIN AND EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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contributed more than anyone to this historiographical trend with his
explorations of changing attitudes to empire, and the boundaries of
Britishness, from the 1740s to the 1790s.2 Kathleen Wilson, another
influential figure in the field, has meanwhile identified `imperialism' as a
vital force in eighteenth-century English life.3
The recognition that British history needs to be studied by reference to
events outside these islands is greatly to be welcomed. Unfortunately this
widening of horizons has largely been confined to empire. There has been
no comparable acknowledgement in the recent literature of the importance
of continental Europe. It almost seems as if the preferences of those
eighteenth-century commentators who longed for Britain to avoid
continental connections and concentrate instead on imperial security
and expansion have been accepted as undisputed expressions of national
sentiment or even as descriptions of established reality. Some scholars
appear to ignore the European dimensions of eighteenth-century Britain
altogether. Others present empire and Europe as alternatives, and point
to a turning away from the continent in the middle of the century. While
both Daniel Baugh and Eliga Gould suggest that there was a return to
an emphasis on Britain's European persona after defeat in the American
war of 1775­83 and the loss of most of the mainland North American
colonies, they see this return as following a long period of disengagement
­ in Baugh's words a `withdrawing from Europe' ­ which took place
from the time of the War of the Austrian Succession of 1740­8 and the
Seven Years War of 1756­63.4
If the period from the middle of the century to the conclusion of the
American war did in some respects see a withdrawal from Europe, in
others it most emphatically did not. And viewing the eighteenth century
as a whole, it must be said that, if Britain and Ireland were the centres of
an empire, and particularly an Atlantic empire, which in some minds
stretched definitions of the nation across the ocean to include the North
2 `"Cornwallis Triumphant": War in India and the British Public in the Late-Eighteenth Century',
in War, Strategy, and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir Michael Howard, ed. Lawrence
Freedman, Paul Hayes, and Robert O'Neill (Oxford, 1992), pp. 57­74; `A Nation Defined by
Empire, 1755­1776', in Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, ed. Alexander Grant
and Keith J. Stringer (1995), pp. 208­22; `Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: I,
Reshaping the Empire', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society [hereafter TRHS], 6th ser., viii
(1998), 1­18; and `Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: II, Britons and Americans',
TRHS, 6th ser., ix (1999), 1­16.
3 See her `Empire, Trade and Popular Politics in Mid-Hanoverian Britain: The Case of Admiral
Vernon', Past and Present [hereafter P & P], cxxi (1988), 74­109; `Empire and Virtue: The Imperial
Project and Hanoverian Culture, c.1720­1785', in An Imperial State at War: Britain from 1689 to
1815, ed. Lawrence Stone (1994) [hereafter Stone, Imperial State], pp. 128­64; The Sense of the
People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715­1785 (Cambridge, 1995); and The Island
Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (2002).
4 Daniel A. Baugh, `Withdrawing from Europe: Anglo-French Maritime Geopolitics, 1750­1800',
International History Review, xx (1988), 1­32, and `Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce:
The Uses of a "Grand Maritime Empire"', in Stone, Imperial State, pp. 185­223; Eliga Gould,
`American Independence and Britain's Counter-Revolution', P & P, cliv (1997), 107­41, and The
Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill,
NC, 2000). See also Jeremy Black, America or Europe? British Foreign Policy 1739­63 (1998).
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American colonies, then Britain and Ireland were also part of Europe
and tied to the continent in innumerable ways. These ties might not have
been welcome to all the British and Irish ­ to put it mildly ­ but they
undoubtedly existed, and it could be argued that the very strength of
opposition to certain of them only serves to demonstrate their importance.
The primary objective of this article is simply to sketch out a number
of these continental connections. By trying to encourage more recognition
of the European dimensions of eighteenth-century Britain,5 the
intention is not to diminish the role of empire, but to present its importance
in a way that would have been familiar to many contemporaries,
but tends to be overlooked, or at least under-emphasized, by all but a
few modern historians. Empire and continental Europe, as the second
section of the article seeks to demonstrate, can most usefully be seen as
complementary rather than competing or alternating sites of British
interest.
I
Britain and Ireland were tied to continental Europe for most of the
eighteenth century by their rulers. George I, who succeeded to the British
and Irish crowns in 1714, did not abandon his German territories, but
remained elector of Hanover. He and his successor George II spent
much of their time visiting their German dominions and much of their
energy trying to expand or defend them. British ministers who wanted to
further their careers were well advised to indulge their royal masters in
their Hanoverian predilections.6 The German orientation of the first two
Hanoverian monarchs was much criticized by opposition politicians and
newspapers, especially during wartime, when the need to protect their
electoral lands was seen by some observers as a great limitation on British
strategy.7 Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II's son but also one of
his most implacable enemies, sought to appease anti-Hanoverians by
planning formally to divide his inheritance, so that his eldest son became
king of Britain and Ireland and the next in line succeeded to Hanover.8
5 Bob Harris, focusing on the mid-eighteenth century, has been drawing attention to the importance
of Europe for some years: see `"American Idols": Empire, War and the Middling Ranks in
Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain', P & P, xl (1996), 111­41; `Patriotic Commerce and National
Revival: The Free British Fishery Society and British Politics, c.1749­58', English Historical Review
[hereafter EHR], cxiv (1999), esp. 312; Politics and the Nation: Britain in the Mid-Eighteenth
Century (Oxford, 2002). J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688­1832: Ideology, Social Structure and
Political Practice during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1985), famously tried to place the England
of his period in a European context. But the controversy surrounding his work perhaps delayed
rather than advanced further engagement with the European dimensions of eighteenth-century
British history.
6 See Jeremy Black, `Britain and Hanover, 1714­60', EHR (forthcoming).
7 Glasgow City Archives, Stirling of Keir Papers, T-SK 11/2/25, John Stirling to Robert Stirling,
22 April 1742. For anti-Hanoverian feeling at this time, see especially Uriel Dann, Hanover and
Great Britain, 1740­1760 (Leicester, 1991), pp. 55­6.
8 `Leicester House Politics, 1750­60: From the Papers of John, Second Earl of Egmont', ed. A. N.
Newman, in Camden Miscellany, xxiii (Royal Historical Society, Camden 4th ser., vii, 1969), 192.
356 BRITAIN AND EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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Nothing came of this proposed division, as Frederick died before his
father. But George III, Frederick's heir, carried on the tradition of disparaging
his family's German homeland, petulantly describing it, while
he was Prince of Wales, as `that horrid electorate'.9 On succeeding to the
throne in 1760, he paraded his British credentials and put pressure on his
ministers to end the German phase of the Seven Years War as speedily as
possible. But even during the 1760s George III carried on an extensive
correspondence ­ in German ­ with his Hanoverian ministers;10 and, like
his predecessors, he patronized German tradesmen in London.11 From
the time of the American war, when Hanoverian military resources were
deployed to assist the British state, rather than British troops and money
used to support Hanover, royal criticism of `that horrid electorate' seems
to have been dropped. By the mid-1780s George III was enthusiastically
playing the part of a German prince and displaying almost as much
solicitude for Hanover as his grandfather had done before him.12
For a significant part of the century, there was an alternative dynasty
to the Hanoverians. The Catholic Stuarts, who had been removed from
the British and Irish thrones in 1689­90, continued to hope for their
restoration with varying degrees of expectation until the 1760s when hope
as well as expectation finally evaporated. Although the Stuarts were originally
Scottish, in the eighteenth century they were as closely associated
with the continent as were the Hanoverian incumbents. James II had fled
into exile in France, and his son James Francis Edward spent most of
his life in Rome. James Francis Edward's eldest son, Charles Edward, was
born in that city, and when he tried to reclaim his father's inheritance in
1745­6, he was dismissively described by sources loyal to the Hanoverians
as `the Young Italian'.13 Plans for a Stuart restoration had a measure of
domestic support, especially in Scotland and amongst Ireland's Catholic
population,14 but a Stuart comeback was ultimately dependent upon
foreign military backing, which usually meant French assistance. Yet
French association with the Jacobite cause, perhaps more than anything else,
condemned it to failure. A contemporary cartoon conveyed the message
that England under the restored Stuarts would dance to France's tune,15
9 G. M. Ditchfield, George III: An Essay in Monarchy (2002), p. 23.
10 Ibid., pp. 29­30.
11 See, for example, Thomas Mortimer, The Universal Director; Or, the Nobleman and Gentleman's
True Guide (1763), pt. ii, pp. 28, 39, 51.
12 T. C. W. Blanning, `"That Horrid Electorate" or "Ma Patrie Germanique"? George III, Hanover
and the Fürstenbund of 1785', Historical Journal [hereafter HJ], xx (1977), 311­44.
13 See, for instance, Oxford Gazette and Reading Mercury, 12 May 1746; Historical Manuscripts
Commission [hereafter HMC], DuCane MSS (1905), p. 129.
14 Murray G. H. Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland
(Cambridge, 1994); Éamonn Ó Ciardha, `The Stuarts and Deliverance in Irish and Scots-Gaelic
Poetry, 1690­1760', in Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500: Integration and
Diversity, ed. S. J. Connolly (Dublin, 1999), pp. 78­94, and Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the
Jacobite Cause, 1685­1766: A Fatal Attachment (Dublin, 2002) [hereafter Ó Ciardha, Ireland and
the Jacobite Cause].
15 British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, 2659, The Plagues of England or the Jacobites
Folly.
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while a leading periodical of the day had no hesitation in pronouncing
that a consequence of the Pretender's success would be that England
became `a province to France'.16 Faced with a choice between the Hanoverians
and the French-backed Stuarts, most Protestant Britons were
almost bound to opt for the incumbent dynasty.17
In the field of foreign policy, the idea that British governments
withdrew from Europe after the War of the Austrian Succession, or more
particularly between the end of the Seven Years War and the acknowledgement
of American independence in 1783, would seem, on the face of
it, hard to deny. From 1762 until 1787, Britain had no European ally of any
substance, and in 1768 domestic turmoil and imperial issues ­ in both North
America and India ­ preoccupied British government ministers to such an
extent that they did nothing to prevent the French annexation of Corsica.18
But even in this least obviously `European' of periods, the continent was
not ignored. Ministers might have been caught off-guard during the
Corsican affair, but their critics, inside and outside parliament, seized
upon this episode in a manner that suggests that the public had far from
turned its back on Europe. The famous letters of `Junius', which appeared
in an opposition newspaper, lambasted the government over its handling
of the Corsican episode.19 Pamphlet literature was no less critical.20 Perhaps
most revealingly, James Boswell's Account of Corsica, first published in
Glasgow and London in 1768, went through at least five editions before the
end of 1769.21 Nor should it be forgotten that between 1763 and 1765 there
were attempts to resurrect an alliance with Austria, that in the late 1760s
the British government sought to counter French influence in Sweden,
that a few years later British ministers even contemplated an alliance with
France to check the expansionism of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and
that during the American war a great deal of British diplomatic effort
was put into trying to secure the active friendship of a major European
power, with repeated attempts to win over Catherine the Great of Russia.22
16 Gentleman's Magazine, xv (1745), 525.
17 See, for example, the comments in `Extracts from the Diary of the Reverend John Bisset, Minister
at Aberdeen, 1745­1746', Miscellany of the Spalding Club, i, ed. John Stuart (Spalding Club,
Aberdeen, 1841), p. 358.
18 Peter D. G. Thomas, George III: King and Politicians (Manchester, 2002), esp. pp. 188­9. See
also H. M. Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1990) [hereafter
Scott, British Foreign Policy], esp. pp. 115­22.
19 The Letters of Junius, ed. John Cannon (Oxford, 1978), pp. 72­3, 76, 79, 83. For debate in the
British parliament, see The Parliamentary History of England, ed. William Cobbett and J. Wright
(36 vols., 1806­20), xvi, col. 475.
20 [Anon.], A Letter to the Earl of Shelburne on the Fatal Consequences of Suffering the French to
Invade Corsica (1768).
21 Editions were published in Glasgow, London and Dublin. Another sign of public interest in
Corsica was the publication of Frederic de Neuhoff's Memoirs of Corsica. Containing the Natural
and Political History of that Important Island (1768). Neuhoff was the son of Theodore, Freiherr
von Neuhoff, who had been the British-supported king of Corsica in the 1730s and 1740s. See also
William Richardson, Corsica: A Poetical Address (2nd edn., Glasgow, 1769).
22 Jonathan R. Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (New Haven, Conn., 1985),
ch. 15, and Scott, British Foreign Policy, chs. 4, 7, 10­11.
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If Britain failed to secure any significant alliance in this period, it was
not for want of trying.
Looking beyond the years 1762­87, it becomes clear that eighteenthcentury
British governments generally pursued an active and interventionist
foreign policy, designed principally to curb French power in Europe. Sir
Robert Walpole's ministry was a significant exception, as he presided
over a period of Anglo-French détente, and refused to allow Britain to
be drawn into the War of the Polish Succession of 1733­5.23 But British
troops were committed to the continent during the War of the Austrian
Succession in the 1740s and the Seven Years War in the late 1750s and
early 1760s. They returned in the conflict with revolutionary France at
the end of the century. This commitment was only partly attributable to the
natural concerns of George II and George III about the security of their
German territories: there had been a similar commitment of manpower
and money in the War of the Spanish Succession of 1702­13, before the
Hanoverians succeeded to the British and Irish thrones, and British
involvement in the French Revolutionary War of 1793­1802 owed little
or nothing to Hanoverian considerations.
The main determinant in each of these eighteenth-century conflicts
was the desire to preserve the existing balance of power in Europe, which
essentially meant checking French territorial expansion and influence. A
particular priority was keeping the Low Countries free from French
domination, as it was perceived that Britain's own security would be
greatly undermined if the French gained access to the ports of the
Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic from which they could
extend the threat of invasion to the whole of the exposed North Sea coast
of England and Scotland. As a pro-ministerial pamphleteer explained
in the Austrian Succession conflict, `this island would be the Seat of the
War, if once our Out-works on the Continent were entirely in the Possession
of the Enemy'.24 But commitment to checking French power in
Europe was also bound up with the protection of British trade. Recent
scholarship has stressed the growth in the importance of imperial commerce
in the eighteenth century,25 but it was not until the late 1760s and
early 1770s that officially recorded exports to North America, the
Caribbean and the empire generally started to exceed officially recorded
exports to continental Europe. Even in the early 1790s, the continent
remained a major market for British exports, and a few decades earlier it
was the key consumer of British goods. Customs accounts suggest that
in 1750­1 Europe accounted for 71 per cent of all English domestically
23 Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century
(1986), pp. 29­31.
24 [Anon.], A Proper Answer to a Late Scurrilous Libel, Entitled, an Apology for the Conduct of a
Late Celebrated Second-Rate Minister (1747), pp. 20­1.
25 See, for instance, Jacob M. Price, `The Imperial Economy, 1700­1776', in The Oxford History of
the British Empire, ii: The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford, 1998), pp. 87 and 101
(table 4.4).
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produced exports.26 In the words of Malachy Postlethwayt, a noted
writer on political economy, `Such are our commercial Connections with
the Continent, that, if we will support our Trade, we must support our
Customers when they need our Protection'.27
Eighteenth-century British and Irish newspapers and periodicals
helped to make continental politics accessible to a wider public, especially
in wartime. During the Jacobite rebellion of 1745­6, when domestic
concerns might have been expected to dominate, there were still lengthy
reports published on military operations in Flanders, Germany and Italy.28
Thirty-odd years later, during the American war, when events across the
Atlantic might have squeezed European news out of the papers and magazines,
there was nearly always attention paid to what was happening on
the continent, with detailed coverage devoted to the crisis surrounding
the Bavarian succession and the brief war in 1778­9 between Austria and
Prussia in Bohemia.29 Given the extent of continental news, it would
have been difficult for readers not to have believed that Britain was
profoundly affected by continental occurrences. In December 1745 the
church bells in Shrewsbury were rung when it was learned that the
Austrians had stopped fighting the Prussians in Germany, which was
welcomed because it promised to make possible the renewed concentration
of Habsburg forces against the French.30 In the next war, the military
progress of Frederick the Great of Prussia, now an ally of Britain, was
followed with enormous emotional commitment. His victories were
celebrated almost as much as British triumphs, while his defeats
were lamented scarcely less than if they had been inflicted on a British
army.31
Formal relations between states, important though they were, are an
inadequate guide to the importance of continental connections. All
manner of individuals, acting on their own initiative, sought to survey
continental practices, often to promote emulation in Britain and Ireland.
26 Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688­1959 (2nd edn., Cambridge,
1967), table 22.
27 Malachy Postlethwayt, Great-Britain's True System (1757), p. cxxx. See also Postlethwayt's
Britain's Commercial Interest Explained and Improved (2 vols., 1757), ii. 511; and [Anon.], The
Occasional Patriot: Or, an Enquiry into the Present Connections of Great Britain with the Continent
(1756).
28 See, for example, Penny Post, or The Morning Advertiser, 23­5 Sept. 1745, and also `A Faithful
Soldier's Address', in General Evening Post, 14­17 Sept. 1745. On 11 Jan. 1746, the Westminster
Journal, an essay paper, devoted the whole of the front page and a column of the second to `A Short
Review of the Affairs of Europe for the Year 1745'.
29 In July 1778, every issue of the twice-weekly London Chronicle carried news of the Austro-Prussian
war. The conflict was also reported in the Morning Chronicle, and London Advertiser, 11, 18, 20, 23,
25, 29 July, and 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27, 29 Aug. 1778, and Gentleman's Magazine, xlviii (1778),
pp. 330, 331, 333, 357­9, 370­2, etc.
30 Shropshire Record Office, Attingham Collection, 112/12/Box 20/109.
31 See, for example, National Library of Wales, Nanteos MSS, L 144; Hampshire Record Office,
Jervoise of Herriard Papers, 44M69/F7/14/12/4; Derbyshire Record Office, Wilmot Horton of
Catton Collection, D 3155 C2049; Somerset Record Office, Dickinson Papers, DD/DN 498, Ambrose
Isted to Stephen Fuller, 11 Dec. 1757.
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Agricultural techniques were a favourite subject of enquiry,32 as were
military matters,33 and even governmental institutions. William Mildmay
produced in 1763 an account of the French methods of preventing
robberies ­ a decidedly topical issue in the aftermath of the Seven Years
War, when large numbers of men were demobilized from the armed
forces and fear of crime was rampant. Mindful of the prejudice against
importing ideas from the recently defeated enemy, Mildmay was at pains
to stress that he was not recommending but describing. Nevertheless,
there can be little doubt of his hope that, suitably adapted to British conditions,
French example might be followed.34
On a more intellectual level, the links between the British Isles and
continental Europe are readily apparent. There was a steady two-way
traffic in publications on the science of government, political economy,
social development, history, and jurisprudence. The works of the Italian
penal theorist Beccaria, and the French philosophers Burlamaqui, Montesquieu,
Rousseau and Voltaire were consumed in Britain and Ireland
both in French and in English translations,35 while the writings of such
luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson appeared
in French editions.36 The `Enlightenment' might be a label adopted by
historians, and can certainly be viewed in different national contexts,37
but at least some contemporaries believed that they were living through
a period in which there were common European intellectual currents.38
In the late 1760s, Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher, saw himself
building upon the foundations provided by Helvétius;39 while William Eden,
in his work on penal theory, published in 1771, candidly acknowledged his
debt to Montesquieu and Beccaria as well as to English legal authorities.40
32 See, for instance, [Anon.], Foreign Essays on Agriculture and Arts. Consisting Chiefly of the Most
Curious Discoveries made in the Several Provinces of France, Germany, Flanders, Sweden, Italy,
Switzerland, &c. and Communicated . . . for the Improvement of British Husbandry (1766).
33 Earl of Pembroke, Military Equitation; Or, a Method of Breaking Horses and Teaching Soldiers
How to Ride (1761), which was based on the author's continental experiences.
34 William Mildmay, The Police of France: Or, an Account of the Laws and Regulations Established
in that Kingdom, for the Preservation of Peace, and the Preventing of Robberies. To which is Added,
a Particular Description of the Police and Government of the City of Paris (1763), esp. iii, v, vi, 58.
35 Thomas Nugent translated a vast amount of French philosophical literature into English: see
Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1767); Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and
Politic Law (2nd edn., 1763); Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (5th edn., 2 vols., 1773); Rousseau,
Emilius and Sophia; Or, an Essay on Education (2 vols., Dublin, 1765?); Voltaire, An Essay on
Universal History, the Manners and Spirit of Nations from the Reign of Charlemaign to the Age of
Lewis XIV (4 vols., 1759).
36 Oeuvres philosophiques de Mr. D. Hume (5 vols., Amsterdam, 1758­60); Smith, Recherches sur la
nature et les causes de la richesse des nations, trans. J. L. Blavet (2 vols.,1788); Ferguson, Essai sur
l'histoire de la société civile, trans. Claude François Meunier (2 vols., Paris, 1783).
37 The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and M. Teich (Cambridge, 1981).
38 Thomas Munck, The Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721­1794 (2000).
39 The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, i, 1752­76, ed. T. L. S. Sprigge (1968), pp. 134n., 261,
282, 367, 368.
40 William Eden, Principles of Penal Law (1771), pp. 8&n., 13&n., 88&n., 100&n., 152&n., 159&n.,
179&n., 185n., 235n., 263n., 264, 274n., 284n., 287n., 293&n., 296n. See also Anthony J. Draper,
`William Eden and Leniency in Punishment', History of Political Thought, xxii (2001), 106­30.
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Religious sentiment, which used to be seen by historians as the implacable
enemy of enlightened ideas, was perhaps still more pan-European.
This was most obviously the case with Catholicism, which everywhere
acknowledged, if with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the spiritual
authority of the papacy. Ireland's Catholic majority not only looked to
the pope and continental-trained clergy for moral leadership but also to
the Catholic powers for protection. France and Spain were viewed by at
least some Catholics as potential deliverers. In fact, Irish Catholic dreams
of the overthrow of the Protestant regime rested on hopes of foreign and
particularly French ­ military intervention.41 Less dramatically,
Catholics in Britain and Ireland, but especially in Ireland, relied on the
Austrian Habsburgs, Britain's allies for much of the eighteenth century,
to protect them from even harsher penal laws: the behind-the-scenes
lobbying of Austrian diplomacy appears to have provided an important
check on the ferocity of anti-Catholic legislation.42
Protestantism has often been viewed by historians as less cosmopolitan
­ indeed, the Protestantism of the British has been identified by Linda
Colley as one of the key ingredients of a national consciousness forged in
reaction to the Catholicism of France and Spain.43 Other scholars have
stressed the fissiparous tendencies within British Protestantism, with
sharp divisions between the Anglican establishment in England and the
Presbyterian establishment in Scotland, and between the established
churches and Protestant Dissenters in each of the four countries of the
British Isles.44 Yet eighteenth-century British and Irish Protestants were
perfectly capable, in the appropriate circumstances, of seeing themselves
as part of a wider movement.45 The transatlantic dimension of Protestant
evangelicalism has been highlighted in a number of important studies,46
but evangelicalism also had an important European aspect.47 Indeed, the
persecution of Protestants in the Catholic states on the continent gave a
41 See Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, esp. chs. 6 and 7; Vincent Morley, Irish Opinion
and the American Revolution, 1760­1783 (Cambridge, 2002), esp. pp. 1­14.
42 David Dickson, New Foundations: Ireland, 1660­1800 (2nd edn., Dublin, 2000), pp. 45, 80, 102.
43 See esp. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707­1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), ch. 1.
44 See, for instance, Richard J. Finlay, `Caledonia or North Britain? Scottish Identity in the Eighteenth
Century', in Image and Identity: The Making and Re-making of Scotland through the Ages, ed.
D. Broun, R. J. Finlay, and M. Lynch (Edinburgh, 1998), pp. 143­56; J. C. D. Clark, `Protestantism,
Nationalism and National Identity', HJ, xliii (2000), 249­76.
45 As W. R. Ward has commented, `though one might never guess it from modern historical writing,
there was still a Protestant world in the eighteenth century to which the Church of England belonged,
to which it was acknowledged to belong and to which it regarded itself as belonging'. See `The EighteenthCentury
Church: A European View', in The Church of England, c.1689­c.1833: From Toleration to
Tractarianism, ed. John Walsh, Colin Haydon, and Stephen Taylor (Cambridge, 1993), p. 285.
46 Susan O'Brien, `A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First
Evangelical Network, 1735­1755', American Historical Review, xci (1986), 811­32, and Michael J.
Crawford, Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England's Revival Tradition in its British Context
(Oxford, 1991).
47 This is well brought out in a number of recent studies including D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism
in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (1989); W. R. Ward, The Protestant
Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 1992) and Christianity Under the Ancien Regime, 1648­1789
(Cambridge, 1999); and G. M. Ditchfield, The Evangelical Revival (1998).
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great boost to religious revivalism in the English-speaking world: George
Whitfield, the great evangelical preacher, expended many words in his
sermons denouncing the treatment of France's Protestant minority,48
while the fate of the Protestant subjects of the Catholic archbishop of
Salzburg was no less roundly condemned.49 Foreign Protestant refugees
reinforced the sense that there existed a European community of faith.
The French Huguenots, who arrived in Britain and Ireland in considerable
numbers after the abandonment of the policy of toleration by the French
monarchy in 1685,50 are perhaps the most well known of these Protestant
immigrant groups, but there were also the German Palatines who came
in the early years of the eighteenth century. A further reminder of the
continental connections of British Protestantism is provided by the Moravians,
a group of proselytizing German evangelists who established a
mission in England in 1728.51
There were, to be sure, some British Protestants who, from the 1760s
onwards, were apparently less interested in Protestant solidarity than
Catholic rehabilitation. To British governments trying to deal with the
rebellious Protestant North American colonies and then the threat of
atheistic republicanism emanating from revolutionary France, the essential
conservatism of the Catholic Church made it appear more as a
potential ally in the defence of the established order and less as a threat
to that order. The concessions given to Catholics in Britain and Ireland
on landownership, education and worship during the American and
French Revolutionary Wars can be understood in this context. Much
earlier, William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury from 1716 to 1737, had
anticipated this softer line towards Catholicism ­ or, in his case, towards
some Catholics ­ by floating the idea of a union, or alliance, between the
Church of England and the Gallicans of the French Catholic Church,
who were resistant to papal interference.52
But Wake's plans ­ like later proposed concessions to Catholics ­ can
also be interpreted as an attempt to undermine Catholicism. Wake was
trying, in effect, to encourage the birth of a French equivalent of the
Anglican Church and thereby to weaken international `popery'. Indeed,
48 Whitfield, A Short Address to Persons of All Denominations, Occasioned by the Alarm of an
Intended Invasion (1756), esp. p. 17. See also Richard Winter, The Importance and Necessity of His
Majesty's Declaration of War with France Considered and Improved, in a Sermon, Preached, May
23rd 1756, at the Meeting-House in Moorfields, and to the Congregation of Protestant Dissenters at
Islington (1756), p. iii; and, for earlier concern, Gentleman's Magazine, xxii (1752), 386 and 538.
49 [Anon.], A Serious Call to the City of London, and Thro' them to the Whole Nation, to the Relief
of the Persecuted Protestants of Saltzburg (1732); [Anon.], An Account of the Sufferings of the
Persecuted Protestants in the Archbishoprick of Saltzburg (1732); [Anon.], A Further Account of the
Sufferings of the Persecuted Protestants in the Archbishoprick of Saltzburg (1733).
50 Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement, c.1550­1700, trans.
Peregrine Stevenson and Adriana Stevenson (Cambridge, 1991).
51 Colin Podmore, The Moravian Church in England, 1728­1760 (Oxford, 1998), and Geoffrey Stead,
The Moravian Settlement at Fulneck, 1742­1790 (Thoresby Society, 2nd ser., ix, Leeds, 1999).
52 See William Wake's Gallican Correspondence and Related Documents, 1716­1731, ed. Leonard
Adams (5 vols., New York, 1988­91).
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for most of the eighteenth century, British and Irish Protestants seem to have
seen themselves as part of a European-wide `Protestant Interest', which
they believed was locked in a life-and-death struggle with Catholicism. For
example, this sense of Protestant solidarity emerged strongly during the
1745 rebellion, when the threat of the restoration of the Catholic Stuarts
led to great emphasis on Britain's role as `the Buttress of the Protestant
Cause',53 and no less strongly immediately after the uprising was crushed,
when serious consideration was given to transporting the rebel clans to
the West Indies and repopulating the vacated parts of the Highlands
with `imported foreign Protestants'.54 Protestant solidarity similarly
helps to explain the hero worship of Frederick the Great of Prussia in the
Seven Years War and the willingness of the British public to accept a
substantial British military and financial commitment to continental
Europe during the same conflict.55 It also partly accounts for the bitterness
in Britain when the Dutch assisted the French and Spanish, as well
as the rebellious colonists, in the American war.56
Connections in the realm of ideas ­ secular and religious ­ were further
reinforced by the personal experience of countless individuals on the
move. Continental institutions of learning attracted elite Britons. Most
notable was the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, where there
were significant numbers of English and still more so of Scots in the
student body. Around 1745, British students at Leiden included George
Colebrooke, later chairman of the East India Company, John Wilkes,
subsequently a popular anti-authoritarian hero, and William Dowdeswell
and Charles Townshend, future chancellors of the exchequer. The University
of Utrecht could count amongst its alumni no less a person than
William Pitt the Elder. Lord Barrington, a minister in almost every
government between 1746 and 1778, studied for three years at Geneva in
the 1730s.57 It should also be noted that continental military academies,
such as Strasbourg, Caen and Turin, provided instruction for a number
of young men who became officers in the British army.58
53 [Anon.], An Earnest Address to Britons ([1745]), p. 22. See also, for instance, Gentleman's Magazine,
xv (1745), 634; Thomas Amory, The Prayer of King Jehoshaphat Considered and Applied to the State
of the Nation (1745), p. 27; Dr Williams's Library, MS 90.2, Sarah Savage's Journal, 30 Sept. 1745.
54 Nottingham University Library, Newcastle of Clumber MSS, NeC 1534/2.
55 For a good example, see Bedfordshire Record Office, Lucas of Wrest Park Papers, L 30/9/3/62,
Lady Anson to Marchioness Grey, 2 Aug. 1757.
56 See, for instance, Lincolnshire Archives Office, Diary and Account-book of Matthew Flinders,
30 Dec. 1780. Protestant solidarity might also help to explain the uneasiness of some government
supporters about war with a traditional ally: see A Selection of William Twining's Letters, 1734­
1804, ed. Ralph S. Walker (2 vols., Lampeter, 1991), i. 212.
57 The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754­1790, ed. Sir Lewis Namier and John
Brooke (3 vols., 1964), i. 111­12. See also Hilde de Ridder-Symeons, `Mobility', in A History of the
University in Europe, ii: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500­1800), ed. Hilde de RidderSymeons
(Cambridge, 1996), p. 423.
58 Richard Augustus Wyvill, for instance, spent two years at Strasbourg before joining the 38th
Foot in 1780 (see his journal in the Peter Force collection, Library of Congress). Sir Mathew
Blakiston, a cornet in the 2nd Horse, was given leave of absence in the same year to study at the
University of Göttingen in Hanover (PRO, State Papers Ireland, SP 63/469, fo. 21).
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The Grand Tour took many members of the nobility and gentry to the
continent.59 During a peregrination lasting perhaps a couple of years or
more, they were expected to polish their foreign-language skills and
broaden their minds by visiting major cities and other places of interest.
France was a particular magnet owing to its cultural, intellectual and
military stature, not to mention its food and wine, and if wartime effectively
made the country out of bounds, the coming of peace ­ in 1748,
1763, 1783 and 1802 ­ saw a surge of visitors anxious to make up for lost
time. Large numbers also flocked to Italy and especially Rome, `this great
Capital of the world', as one tourist enthused in 1780,60 which to the
British social and political elite was one of the centres of a European
civilization kept alive by an education dominated by the works of classical
antiquity.61
A substantial travel literature existed to assist these upper-class tourists.62
Such publications could reinforce rather than counter prejudices against
foreigners in general, and the French in particular: one guide urged
would-be travellers in its very title Not to Spend More Money in the
Country of our Natural Enemy, than is Requisite to Support with Decency
the Character of an English Man.63 No doubt many of those who read
such material probably never left the shores of Britain or Ireland. Nevertheless,
the popularity of Tobias Smollett's Travels through France and
Italy of 1766, and still more so of Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey
through France and Italy, a riposte to Smollett, which was first published
in 1768, suggests that there was a public appetite for literature relating to
the continent ­ whether imaginative or based on fact ­ that far outstripped
the number of those who went on the Grand Tour.
It would be a mistake to assume that direct contact with the continent
was confined to the aristocracy and gentry. Many British and Irish men
and women of more humble birth also had first-hand knowledge of
Europe and its peoples. Five occupational categories were perhaps
particularly important in this regard: first, seafarers; second, merchants;
third, skilled craftsmen, specialist retailers, and technicians who can be
grouped together as economic migrants; fourth, smugglers; and, finally,
soldiers. In each case there was significant bilateral traffic that gave both
59 See Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour (1985) and France and the Grand Tour (2003).
60 The Pembroke Papers (1734­1780): Letters and Diaries of Henry, Tenth Earl of Pembroke and
His Circle, ed. Lord Herbert (1942), p. 376.
61 See, for instance, The History of the University of Oxford, v: The Eighteenth Century, ed. L. S.
Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford, 1986), chs. 15 and 17.
62 Thomas Nugent, The Grand Tour. Containing an Exact Description of Most of the Cities, Towns,
and Remarkable Places of Europe (4 vols., 1749); Philip Thicknesse, Useful Hints to Those who
Make the Tour of France, in a Series of Letters Written from that Kingdom (2nd edn., 1770); Harry
Peckham, The Tour of Holland, Dutch Brabant, the Austrian Netherland, and Part of France; in
which is Included a Description of Paris and its Environs (1772).
63 [Philip Playstowe?], The Gentleman's Guide, in His Tour through France. Wrote by an Officer in
the Royal-Navy, who Lately Travelled on a Principle . . . viz. Not to Spend More Money in the Country
of Our Natural Enemy, than is Requisite to Support with Decency the Character of an English Man
(Bristol, 1766). A 9th London edition was published in 1787.
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depth and breadth to the continental connections of eighteenth-century
Britain and Ireland.
There were sailors from continental Europe serving in the Royal Navy,
especially during the century's many wars, when the press gangs were not
very scrupulous about whom they rounded up. Dutch neutrals were
recruited in the Seven Years War,64 while in 1778, during the American
conflict, the Danish consul in London protested at the `great Number of
our Seamen pressed'.65 The European contribution should not be exaggerated:
probably no more than 5­6 per cent of the navy's ratings were
categorized as `foreign' at this time, which hardly made the senior service
cosmopolitan.66 But many people who never joined the navy would have
come into contact with foreign mariners. In wartime, captured enemy
sailors ­ from naval vessels, privateers, and merchant ships ­ were sometimes
paroled and allowed, under certain restrictions, to mix with the
local population. Some 200 French mariners, for instance, were temporarily
resident in the Devonshire town of Tavistock in June 1759.67 More
importantly, sailors from continental Europe carried goods to and from
British ports in foreign ships ­ especially in wartime, when large numbers
of British merchant vessels were employed for military purposes, and those
still available to carry merchant cargoes paid high insurance premiums.68
Continental mariners also served on board British and Irish merchant
vessels ­ again, especially in time of war, when the conscription of large
numbers of local seafarers caused a labour shortage, pushed up wages,
and attracted trained mariners from abroad. According to a recent study,
in wartime up to 75 per cent of the crews in London's merchant fleet
were foreigners, mainly Dutch and Scandinavian.69 Hence, no doubt, the
establishment of places of worship for these sailors in Wapping ­ John
Rocque's Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of
Southwark of 1747 shows that there was a Danish Church in Wellclose
Square, and a Swedish Church in nearby Princes Square, both just north
of Ratcliff Highway.70
There were also many British and Irish sailors with experience of continental
Europe. True, the crews of Royal Navy ships tended to see the
European mainland from afar ­ from ships cruising off the coast, blockading
enemy bases, or mooring off friendly ports while protecting convoys
64 PRO, Admiralty Papers, ADM 1/2011, Capt. Joseph Knight to John Clevland, 3 Nov. 1761.
65 Ibid., ADM 1/5118/21, fo. 520.
66 Stephen Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford, 2000), p. 36.
67 Devon Record Office, Bedford Papers, L 1258M/SS/C (LP 18), bundle 1, `A true and perfect list
of the prisoners on parole at Tavistock with their respective qualitye', 8 June 1759.
68 For the increase in the number of foreign vessels engaged in overseas trade, see Gordon Jackson,
Hull in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Economic and Social History (Oxford, 1972), p. 133; The
Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, v: 1755­1760, ed. Alexander J. Wall (New-York Historical
Society Collections for 1921, New York, 1923), p. 93; The Torrington Diaries, ed. C. Bruyn Andrews
(4 vols., 1934­8), i. 94.
69 Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650­1775 (1998), p. 203.
70 Ralph Hyde, The A to Z of Georgian London (London Topographical Society, Publication no.
126, 1982), p. 28.
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of merchant vessels. But naval crews were sometimes allowed ashore,
despite fears that they might desert.71 Merchant seamen were perhaps
more likely to be familiar with European ports. British trade with the
continent was extensive ­ for most of the eighteenth century, it was much
more extensive than trade with British possessions beyond Europe. British
and Irish ships plied to and from ports in the Baltic, North Germany, the
Low Countries, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy. There was even a substantial
volume of maritime trade with France. In time of war merchant
sailors might be captured by enemy privateers and compelled to remain
in a foreign port until their return could be negotiated.72 Others deliberately
tarried in European ports to avoid the press gangs that might attempt
forcibly to conscript them into the Royal Navy once they reached, or
even approached, their home port. Lisbon was a well-known hideaway
for British and Irish sailors reluctant to serve on His Majesty's ships.73
If British trade with the continent explains the contact experienced by
many seafarers, it also helps to account for the presence of European
merchants in the British Isles and of British and Irish merchants in Europe.
Major English ports, especially London, had identifiable resident foreign
merchants. A London trade directory of 1740 includes amongst the
merchants listed a great number of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch,
and German names, besides a significant number of French ones, most
of which probably belonged to the descendants of Huguenot refugees.74
There were perhaps still larger numbers of British and Irish merchants
living ­ permanently or temporarily ­ in coastal communities in continental
Europe. Some were scattered in penny packets, such as William Keetin,
who was based at Dunkirk in the middle of the century and took a necessarily
detached view of Anglo-French tensions.75 Others were concentrated
in larger enclaves. Bordeaux had a sizeable Irish Catholic merchant community,
as did Nantes and Cadiz.76 There were enough British merchants
in the Dutch Republic to justify the appointment of Anglican clergymen
at Amsterdam and Rotterdam.77 Oporto was described by Malachy
Postlethwayt, in an account of trade with Portugal, as `so well known
and frequented by our nation' that very little needed to be said about it.78
71 N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (1988), p. 143.
72 Somerset Record Office, Dickinson Papers, DD/DN 200, Nathaniel Alloway to Caleb Dickinson,
27 June 1740, and to Graffin Prankard, 30 June 1740; London Metropolitan Archives, Eliot and
Howard Family Papers, Acc. 1017/944, Diary of John Eliot III, 24 Feb. 1757.
73 Naval Administration, 1715­1750, ed. Daniel A. Baugh (Navy Records Society, cxx, 1977), p. 155.
74 `List of Merchants, &c.', in [Anon.], A Complete Guide to All Persons who have any Trade or
Concern with the City of London and Parts Adjacent (1740), pp. 116­48.
75 See National Library of Wales, Powis Castle MSS, 2212­20.
76 L. M. Cullen, `The Irish Diaspora of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', in Europeans
on the Move: Studies on European Migration, 1500­1800, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford, 1994), p. 136.
77 See Lambeth Palace Library, Fulham Papers, Terrick 2, appointment of Rev. William Atkinson
as chaplain at Rotterdam, 26 May 1770; Sir Joseph Yorke to Bishop Terrick, 6 July 1770. I am
grateful to Reider Payne for these references.
78 Malachy Postlethwayt, The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (4th edn., 2 vols.,
1774), ii, under `Portugal'.
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The British factory at Lisbon was even larger, though weakened by the
great earthquake of 1755.79 St Petersburg also had a significant British
community ­ estimated as about 500-strong in 1780 ­ which was based
on the Russia Company's factory.80
Skilled craftsmen, specialist retailers, and technical experts formed
another element in the movement of people. Continental craftsmen,
shopkeepers and technicians in Britain and Ireland were often indistinguishable
from religious refugees. Many of the Germans in London in
the early decades of the century, for instance, were Protestants who had
fled persecution or its threat in Catholic states.81 But the attractions of
the large London market for German and other continental specialist
retailers should not be underestimated, as the German bookbinders,
confectioners and musical-instrument-makers to be found in London
in the second half of the century were almost certainly drawn by the
hope of material gain rather than religious freedom.82 Their British (if
not Irish) counterparts were usually genuine economic migrants, seeking
opportunities, rather than refuge, in foreign lands. This category includes
William Jackman, a London watchmaker, who followed the British army
to the Low Countries in the War of the Austrian Succession, and resided
for some time in Brussels and Breda where he catered for both the military
and the local population.83 Just as representative were the craftsmen
and technicians who went to Russia after the Seven Years War such as
James Love, a watchmaker at St Petersburg, and Matthew Robinson,
who ran a leather-making business, James Notman, the head of a tannery,
and Anthony Young, a Newcastle millwright, all of whom worked
on Prince Potemkin's great estate at Krichev, in the Ukraine, where a
multiplicity of industrial enterprises were developed from the 1770s
employing imported (and well-paid) British expertise.84
No less significant in bringing about international contact was the
smuggling activity that linked Britain with the continent. The extent of
smuggling is, by its very nature, impossible to measure with precision,
but contemporary estimates of the value of the goods involved suggest a
substantial hidden dimension to overseas trade.85 The principal outgoing
commodity was raw wool, the official export of which was prohibited to
protect the local textile industry from foreign competition. The most
79 L. M. E. Shaw, The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance and the English Merchants in Portugal, 1654­1810
(Aldershot, 1998), ch. 5. For losses incurred as a result of the earthquake, see Wiltshire Record
Office, Wansey Papers, 314/5.
80 A. G. Cross, `The British in Catherine's Russia: A Preliminary Survey', in The Eighteenth Century
in Russia, ed. John Gordon Garrard (Oxford, 1973), pp. 233­63.
81 See Panikos Panayi, `Germans in Eighteenth-Century Britain', in Germans in Britain since 1500,
ed. Panikos Panayi (1996), pp. 29­48.
82 See Ellic Howe, A List of London Bookbinders, 1648­1815 (1950), pp. 8­9, 15, 53.
83 East Suffolk Record Office, Albemarle Papers, HA 67/461/48.
84 Ian R. Christie, The Benthams in Russia, 1780­1791 (Oxford, 1993), esp. pp. 132­3, 141.
85 See the estimates produced by a House of Commons committee in 1783 in House of Commons
Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Sheila Lambert (145 vols., Wilmington, Del., 1975),
xxxviii. 219­20.
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important incoming items included brandy and wines from France, and
tea, which, though originating in Asia, arrived mainly in smuggling vessels
from France, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, where it was available
more cheaply than in Britain or Ireland.86 Indeed, smuggling employed a
workforce of considerable proportions.87 While many of those engaged in
inland distribution had no direct contact with the continent, there were
large numbers of mariners involved in smuggling, especially across the
Channel and the North Sea. In the middle of the century, the navy
reckoned that 400 men regularly engaged in smuggling at Dover, 300 at
Ramsgate and about the same number at Folkestone. Vessels from
France and the Low Countries often brought contraband to within a few
miles of the coast from where it was taken ashore by a host of small
boats. However, most of the ships employed in this clandestine trade
were British. For many of the coastal smugglers in Sussex and Kent,
France must have seemed much closer and easier to access than the
inland parts of their own counties. Significant numbers of them spent a
good deal of time in foreign ports. So strong were their ties with the continent
that British smugglers were often viewed as potentially treasonous.
It was assumed that at least some of their number would have no scruples
about providing information to the enemy or even piloting an invading
force across the sea.88
Wartime provided many opportunities for both the British and the
Irish to come into contact with the continent and its peoples. On two
critical occasions, the defence of Britain itself relied on the import of
foreign auxiliary troops. In 1745­6, when the Jacobite rebellion and French
invasion threatened the Hanoverian regime and the Protestant succession,
Dutch, Swiss and Hessian soldiers arrived in large numbers. Ten
years later, the beginning of the Seven Years War in Europe, and another
threat of French invasion, brought a further influx of foreign troops this
time Hessians and Hanoverians. Hostility to the use of auxiliaries is
well known, and can perhaps be epitomized by the archbishop of York's
chauvinistic comment during the 'Forty-five rebellion that `England can
never be properly defended but by Englishmen'.89 Rather less well known
is the more positive reception that these foreign soldiers received in many
86 For tea-smuggling see H. S. K. Kent, War and Trade in Northern Seas: Anglo-Scandinavian
Economic Relations in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1973), ch. 7; for brandy see L. M.
Cullen, The Brandy Trade under the Ancien Regime: Regional Specialization in the Charente (Cambridge,
1998), esp. pp. 19, 35, 37­8, 239, 240, 242, 246, and the same author's The Irish Brandy
Houses of Eighteenth-Century France (Dublin, 2000), ch. 2.
87 According to a witness at a House of Commons committee in March 1746, `not less than
20,000': Journals of the House of Commons, xxv. 104.
88 Christopher Duffy, The '45: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising
(2003) [hereafter Duffy, The '45], pp. 373­5. See also Paul Musket, `Military Operations against
Smugglers in Kent and Sussex, 1698­1750', Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, lii
(1974), 89­110; Cal Winslow, `Sussex Smugglers', in Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in
Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay et al. (1975), pp. 119­66.
89 `Correspondence of Archbishop Herring and Lord Hardwicke during the Rebellion of 1745', ed.
R. Garnett, EHR, xix (1904), 733.
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quarters. The corporation of Boston in Lincolnshire agreed unanimously
to pay the subsistence costs of a small contingent of Dutch troops who
were driven into their port en route to joining the British forces deployed
against the Jacobites,90 while at the beginning of the Seven Years War,
Gertrude Savile, a Nottinghamshire gentlewoman, wrote in her diary
that the Hanoverian soldiers she had seen encamped in Kent were much
superior in discipline and behaviour to the rude and drunken British
regulars.91
Besides foreign auxiliaries, there were also naturalized foreigners in
the British army itself. Swiss families, such as the Prevosts, the Haldimands,
the Bouquets, and the Cerjats, made a notable contribution to
the officer ranks, but the Huguenots were numerically more important.
Officers who could trace their origins or antecedents back to Protestant
France were to be found in many regiments such as John Carnac of the
Thirty-Ninth Foot and subsequently of the East India Company's army,
who was born in Dublin of Huguenot parents.92 Many Huguenots
progressed to the army's senior posts: Sir John Ligonier, who was made
a lieutenant-general in 1743, and as Lord Ligonier served as the
commander-in-chief from 1757 to 1766, was born in a small town in the
Massif Central as Jean-Louis Ligonier.93
While continental European soldiers served in Britain or in the British
army, many British and Irish soldiers spent part of their lives serving on
the continent. There were Englishmen who joined the armies of other
European powers. Horace St Paul, a Northumberland gentleman, was
with the Austrian forces in the Seven Years War,94 while Francis Townley,
a Lancashire Catholic executed for his part in the 'Forty-five rebellion,
had been an officer in the French Régiment de Limousin.95 Much more
significant numerically were the Scottish and Irish contributions to
foreign armies. There was a Scots brigade in the Dutch army from the
sixteenth century onwards. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century
its rank and file was no longer primarily Scottish, but until its disbandment
in 1782 its officers continued to be drawn mainly from Scottish
90 Transcription of Minutes of the Corporation of Boston, v, 1717 to 1763, ed. Betty Coy, Sheila Hill
and Vera Sharp (Boston, 1993), p. 494.
91 Secret Comment: The Diaries of Gertrude Savile, 1721­1757, ed. Alan Saville (Thoroton Society,
record series, xl, Nottingham, 1997), pp. 318­19. See also Letters of George Dempster to Sir Adam
Fergusson, 1756­1813: With Some Account of his Life, ed. James Fergusson (1934), p. 12.
92 Carnac's mother sent him from Dublin regular reports on the progress of other Huguenot
families in the army or company service: see Oriental and India Office Library, Sutton Court
Collection, Carnac Papers, MS Eur. F128/23.
93 Rex Whitworth, Field Marshal Lord Ligonier: A Story of the British Army, 1702­1770 (Oxford,
1958).
94 1756: The War in Bohemia: The Journal of Horace St Paul, ed. Neil Cogswell (Guisborough,
1996), preface.
95 Duffy, The '45, p. 66. Henry Humphrey Evans Lloyd, a Welshman, served as a senior officer in
the Austrian army and his own account of the Seven Years War was published as The History of
the Late War in Germany, between the King of Prussia, and the Empress of Germany and her Allies
(3 vols., 1781­90).
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landowning families.96 There were also three Scottish regiments in the
French army during the War of the Austrian Succession, which seem to
have been overwhelmingly Scots in composition.97 Irish regiments were
to be found in Spanish service and Irish Catholic officers held commissions
in the armies of every Catholic power from Austria to PiedmontSardinia.
From the end of the seventeenth century, the Irish Brigade of
the French army was the most important outlet for Irish Catholic military
enthusiasm. As with the Scots Brigade in Dutch service, there was a
change in the character of the corps from the middle of the eighteenth
century, with continental Europeans filling the ranks.98 This development
owed something to the determination of the British army to tap
Scottish and then Catholic Irish manpower more effectively. It was also
linked to the decline of Jacobitism, which provided the ideological
underpinning for the Irish presence in foreign armies and to a lesser
extent for the Scottish also. Until the middle of the century, however,
both the Dutch Scots Brigade and the French Irish Brigade were true to
their national origins, and regularly sent recruiting parties to Scotland
and Ireland respectively.99
Even so, service in the British army was the main means by which
British and perhaps even Irish soldiers came to have first-hand knowledge
of the continent and its peoples. Large numbers of British troops
campaigned in Spain, Flanders and Germany during the War of the
Spanish Succession at the beginning of the eighteenth century; 16,000
went to the Austrian Netherlands in 1742; 8,000 were sent to Germany
in 1758, subsequently reinforced to nearly 25,000 before the end of the
Seven Years War. In 1793 when the war against revolutionary France
began, a force of about 20,000 troops was again dispatched to the Low
Countries. In 1799 a British army about 36,000 strong was operating in
the Netherlands. These soldiers, and in some cases their families, came
into contact with the indigenous population; in the winter months they
were usually quartered in taverns or even private homes. Proximity and
mixing did not necessarily promote amity: in the Austrian Netherlands
in the 1740s British troops caused much offence by disrupting Catholic
ceremonies;100 they were to do so again in Germany during the Seven
Years War.101 There is, however, evidence of more positive outcomes: the
journal of a corporal serving in Germany in the Seven Years War
96 See Papers Illustrating the History of the Scots Brigade, ii: 1698­1782, ed. James Ferguson
(Scottish History Society, xxxv, Edinburgh, 1899), esp. p. 394.
97 Helen C. McCorry, `Rats, Lice and Scotchmen: Scottish Infantry Regiments in the Service of
France, 1742­62', Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, lxxiv (1996), 1­38.
98 For French soldiers in the Irish Brigade, see Lee Kennett, The French Armies in the Seven Years
War: A Study in Military Organization and Administration (Durham, NC, 1967), pp. 74­5.
99 For the Irish character of the brigade in 1745, when it distinguished itself at the battle of
Fontenoy, see Harman Murtagh, `Irish Soldiers Abroad, 1600­1800', in A Military History of Ireland,
ed. Thomas Bartlett and Keith Jeffery (Cambridge, 1996), p. 312.
100 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. hist. e. 214, fos. 37­8.
101 HMC, `Manuscripts of M. L. S. Clements', in Various Collections (8 vols., 1901­13), viii. 430, 517.
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suggests that a good number of his colleagues married local women.102
British troops also campaigned and fought alongside soldiers from other
armies. Relations between British soldiers and their allies were not always
cordial; Dutch and British troops seem literally to have come to blows
on a number of occasions during the War of the Austrian Succession.103
But German allied troops were sometimes treated with great respect, and
even regarded as friends. In the summer of 1744, Lord George Sackville,
an officer in the British army in Flanders, reported that, `The Hanoverians
are in great favour with us'. He added that the British and Hanoverian
troops `get drunk very comfortably together, and talk and sing a vast deal
without understanding one syllable of what they say to one another'.104
II
In addition to the continental connections of Britain and Ireland, there
were also connections between Britain's empire and Europe. The empire
itself, it should be remembered, had a European dimension in the eighteenth
century. Leaving aside Ireland, which could be considered as part
of the metropolitan core or as a colony or as both, there were Mediterranean
outposts at Gibraltar and Minorca, acquired during the War of
the Spanish Succession. Gibraltar, despite various attempts to restore it
to Spain, remained in British hands throughout the century; Minorca was
lost in 1756, regained in 1763, lost again in 1782, and briefly reoccupied
during the French Revolutionary War. Corsica, the focus of much British
interest at various times, was also held for a short period in the 1790s.
Nor should it be forgotten that there was a significant continental
contribution to British imperial expansion. Foreign ­ especially Dutch investment
in the national debt underwrote British military efforts
throughout the world.105 In North America, the Seven Years War saw
the formation of the Royal American Regiment, which, despite its name,
contained many recruits from the German states. Amongst the officers
there were also many foreigners, particularly Germans and Swiss.106 In
India, another major area of imperial concern in the eighteenth century,
the European component of the forces of the British East India Company
was called `European' advisedly ­ to term it `British' would have
been most inaccurate. Many of the rank and file were Germans or Swiss
102 The Journal of Corporal Todd 1745­1762, ed. Andrew Cormack and Alan Jones (Army Records
Society, xviii, Stroud, 2001), pp. 129, 131.
103 See Bodleian Library, MS Eng. hist. c.314, fos. 13 and 33. For disparaging comments about
Britain's Portuguese allies in the next war, see Hampshire Record Office, Banbury Papers, 1 M44/
40/7.
104 HMC, Stopford Sackville MSS (2 vols., 1904­10), i. 289­90. See also Buckinghamshire Record
Office, Baker of Penn Papers, D/X 1069/2/116; North Yorkshire Record Office, Darley of Aldby
Papers, ZDA/DAR CP/2/10; British Library, Dropmore Papers, Additional MS 69,382, fo. 96.
105 J. F. Wright, `The Contribution of Overseas Savings to the Funded Debt of Great Britain,
1750­1815', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., (1997), 657­74.
106 Stephen Brumwell, Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755­1763 (Cambridge,
2002), pp. 74­5.
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or deserters from the armies of the other European powers stationed in
the subcontinent.107 During the American war, furthermore, two Hanoverian
regiments, loaned by George III in his capacity as elector, served
alongside the king's and the company's forces in India.
The fundamental point, however, is that in the eighteenth century the
empire outside Europe was seen by many contemporaries as an adjunct
rather than an alternative to Britain's engagement with Europe. Overseas
possessions promoted naval power as the seventeenth-century Navigation
Acts shut foreigners out of the transatlantic carrying trade and so
enabled large numbers of British and colonial mariners to acquire skills
in oceanic seamanship. Those same mariners, or many of them, were
available for conscription into the Royal Navy during armed conflicts. It
should be recognized, however, that the primary task of the navy in wartime
was not imperial expansion but the European objective of shielding
the home territories from invasion by the French and other continental
enemies. With the exception of the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies
at the end of the American war, all the Royal Navy's major triumphs in
the eighteenth century ­ from Barfleur in 1692 to Trafalgar in 1805 were
achieved in waters off the coast of continental Europe.108
Empire also contributed to European ends by providing state revenue,
directly through customs duties levied on imports and indirectly through
excises on domestic production and consumption that had been stimulated
by the availability of imperial goods. This revenue facilitated the
expansion of public credit, which in turn helped Britain to enjoy a warmaking
capacity well beyond its own manpower base. In every one of its
eighteenth-century wars, Britain hired regiments from foreign rulers and
provided subsidies to others who fielded whole armies against the enemy.
In the American war, large numbers of German auxiliary troops were
deployed in North America, and some Hanoverians, as already noted,
were sent to India. For the most part, however, foreign troops were used
in Europe ­ on some occasions for the defence of Britain itself but more
often in campaigns against the French in the Low Countries and Germany.
These continental campaigns, it could be argued, merely aided British
overseas expansion and so demonstrated that ultimately Europe was
secondary to empire. Pitt the Elder, referring to the tying down of French
military resources in Europe by subsidy allies, famously boasted that in
the Seven Years War Britain had conquered America in Germany.109 But
even Pitt's most fervent supporters acknowledged that the relationship
between the two military theatres was more complex than he suggested.
While for the British government and public the Seven Years War began
as a conflict to protect the North American colonies from French
107 See Documents Illustrating the British Conquest of Manila, 1762­1763, ed. Nicholas P. Cushner
(Royal Historical Society, Camden 4th ser., viii, 1971), p. 147.
108 N. A. M. Rodger, `Seapower and Empire: Cause and Effect?', in Colonial Empires Compared:
Britain and the Netherlands, 1750­1850, ed. Bob Moore and Henk van Nierop (Aldershot, 2003),
pp. 97­111.
109 Parliamentary History, ed. Cobbett and Wright, xv, col. 1267 (9 Dec. 1762).
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encroachments, it soon developed into a war against French power and
pretensions everywhere. The French, it was widely believed, had to be
checked on the continent as much as in areas of imperial competition.
Without a European dimension to the war, France and its allies would
dominate Germany with the result that the frequently invoked `Protestant
Interest' would be fatally undermined. Britain and Ireland would
also be placed in great danger of external attack as the French would be
free to devote most of their efforts to that end.110 The fighting beyond
Europe served much the same purpose as the raids on the French coast
­ the aim, in part at least, was to divert French military and financial
resources from Germany, and so reduce the pressure on Frederick the
Great and Britain's other subsidy allies.111 Furthermore, taking the war
to French overseas possessions, especially in the Caribbean, not only
stretched French military and naval resources, but also helped to undermine
French public finances and therefore France's ability to fund its
own armies in Germany and pay subsidies to its European allies. As a
contemporary periodical explained, by attacking the French in the West
Indies, the British would `cut away one great part of the resources which
fed the war'.112
In a very basic sense, Europe was primary rather than secondary. The
imperial triumphs of the later part of the Seven Years War were celebrated
because they were believed to have achieved enhanced standing
for Britain. As the borough of New Windsor enthusiastically opined in
its congratulatory address to the king at the end of 1759, `The Reputation
of Great Britain hath been raised to a Degree of Glory unknown in
History'.113 It was, needless to say, European rivals, and especially the
French, whom the worthy townsmen of New Windsor believed would be
impressed. To Britons, who had long wrestled with a form of inferiority
complex so far as the French were concerned, imperial acquisitions
helped to secure what a pamphlet of 1760 described as the ultimate
national aim ­ a proper `Weight, and Consideration in Europe'.114
British North Americans themselves were perfectly well aware of this
function of empire. Robert Livingston of New York made this abundantly
clear when he wrote to a Scottish correspondent at the beginning
of the Seven Years War: the question, Livingston stated, was `whither
France or England has North America solely. Whoever has it will give
110 See, for example, Monitor, or British Freeholder, 12 May, 4 Aug. 1759; [Anon.], A Letter
Addressed to Two Great Men, on the Prospect of Peace; and on the Terms Necessary to be Insisted
Upon in the Negociation (2nd edn., Dublin, 1760), pp. 29, 31.
111 See Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, ed. W. S. Pringle and J. H. Taylor (4 vols.,
1838­40), i. 329­30.
112 Annual Register, ii (1759), 11. See also Correspondence of William Pitt, ed. Pringle and Taylor,
i. 353; Monitor, or British Freeholder, 13 Jan. 1759; [Anon.], A Letter to a Great M-r, on the Prospect
of a Peace (1761), p. 139.
113 Berkshire Record Office, Windsor Borough Records, W1/AC 1/1/2, p. 323.
114 [Anon.], Remarks on the Letter Addressed to Two Great Men. In a Letter to the Author of that
Piece (Dublin, 1760), p. 10.
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Law to Europe'.115 In December 1760, with Canada conquered and the
war in North America won, the assembly of Massachusetts announced
that, `This great event' would not only `firmly establish' Britain's power
in America, but would also `contribute to maintaining the Figure which
she now so gloriously makes among the Powers of Europe'.116 At this
moment of triumph, New Englanders had every reason to trumpet the
intrinsic value of empire in North America; yet even they recognized
both the interconnectedness of empire and Europe and the importance
of Europe to Britain.
115 Glasgow City Archives, Kippen and Glassford Papers, TD 132/48, Livingston to John Glassford,
3 Nov. 1755.
116 Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, xxxvii, pt. ii: 1760­1761, ed. Malcolm
Freiberg (Boston, 1965).