Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma

Two Hundred Years of British–Russian Relations

David Owen

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781913368401
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A history of relations between Britain and Russia from the nineteenth century to the present.
 
With Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma, statesman and author David Owen tells the story of Britain's relationship with Russia, which has been surprisingly underexplored. Through his characteristic insight and expertise, he depicts a relationship governed by principle as often as by suspicion, expediency, and necessity.
 
When the two nations formed a pragmatic alliance and fought together at the Battle of Navarino in Greece in 1827, it was overwhelmingly the work of the British prime minister, George Canning. His death brought about a drastic shift that would see the countries fighting on opposite sides in the Crimean War and jostling for power during the Great Game. It was not until the Russian Revolution of 1917 that another statesman had a defining impact on relations between Britain and Russia: Winston Churchill, who opposed Bolshevism yet never stopped advocating for diplomatic and military engagement with Russia. In the Second World War, he recognized early on the necessity of allying with the Soviets against the menace of Nazi Germany. Bringing us into the twenty-first century, Owen chronicles how both countries have responded to their geopolitical decline. Drawing on both imperial and Soviet history, he explains the unique nature of Putin's autocracy and addresses Britain's return to "blue water" diplomacy.  Newly revised, this paperback edition features extended chapters on Putin's Russia and the future of British–Russian relations after the Russo-Ukrainian War.
 

1

George Canning and the Path to Navarino

Three titans strode the British political stage in the early part of the nineteenth century: William Pitt the Younger, Robert Stewart (Lord Castlereagh), and George Canning. In this chapter, I focus on the latter, who played a critical role both in steering Britain’s relationship with Russia and in delivering Greek independence. While Canning is perhaps more generally known for his support of independence movements in Latin America, his name lives on in Greece; indeed a central square in Athens is named after him: Plateía Kánningos. In London, he is commemorated by a statue in Parliament Square. What attracts me to Canning is his overall strategic view and how, once he had chosen his course, he prepared the path ahead by sacking or moving those diplomats whom he considered obstacles, by building alliances with powerful countries, and by negotiating peace but with a readiness to enforce settlements.

Canning was born on 11 April 1770. His father, the eldest son of an Irish landowner, was disinherited for his marriage to a beautiful but poor girl who became an actress to make ends meet. Fortunately, Canning’s education was paid for by his uncle, Stratford Canning, a wealthy London merchant whose own son would also play important diplomatic roles. Thanks to his uncle’s generosity, Canning went to Eton, then in 1787 to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a reputation for both his scholarship and his debating, and where he took to writing poetry. In his second year, Canning won the Chancellor’s Medal for a poem describing a pilgrimage to Mecca. While there, he was an identifiable Whig (what would later be known as a Liberal), and he abandoned his initial membership of the Eton Club on the advice of his tutor, who viewed it as too political for someone who, on leaving Oxford, would have to earn a living as a professional man, as Canning initially did; he became a lawyer in 1791.

He entered parliament in 1793 as a protégé of William Pitt the Younger who, in 1783 at the age of twenty-four, had become the youngest prime minister of Great Britain. Like Pitt, Canning firmly identified with Catholic Emancipation, the removal of all discrimination against Catholics. He also shared Pitt’s support for William Wilberforce’s campaign against the slave trade, and more generally attempted to benefit the people by enacting wide-reaching reforms.

Another issue on Pitt’s agenda was Russian expansion in Crimea at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. In peace talks following the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–92, the Russians refused to hand over the strategic Ochakov fortress, as demanded by Pitt, who had taken over negotiation from his foreign secretary. The Russian ambassador in London at the time, Semyon Vorontsov, went as far as organising a public opinion campaign to garner favour for Russia’s position. Pitt had difficulty in convincing his parliamentary colleagues that this should be of importance for Britain, and despite winning a vote in the House of Commons he gave up on Ochakov.

Pitt appointed the up-and-coming backbencher Canning to the position of under-secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1795, and The Times wrote on 5 February 1799 that ‘No man transfuses his character more naturally with his speeches … a just mixture of wit and argument and a happy compound of information, modesty and good humour.’ By then, Britain was at war with revolutionary France. Once the news reached London of Nelson’s Battle of the Nile, when Nelson defeated the French at Aboukir Bay on 1–3 August 1798, Canning wrote, ‘Never, no never in the history of the world, was there a victory at once so brilliant in itself and so important in its consequence.’¹ Wendy Hinde, a biographer of Canning, perceptively draws attention to these early comments, writing,

He was understandably, if exaggeratedly, elated. Nelson’s victory effectively scotched Bonaparte’s plans for Eastern conquests to which he had turned when he realised that the invasion of England was for the moment impractical; it re-established the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean, and it encouraged the indecisive Tsar, Paul I, to take up arms in support of the Austrians who in 1798 had again been attacked by France.²

This was an early sign that Canning was interested in the navy and its capacity to project British influence.

Despite sharing a common enemy in France, Britain’s relationship with Russia was not easy. In 1800, when Britain established a protectorate in Malta after the capitulation of the occupying French forces, the then Russian emperor, Paul I, took great offence; he was the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller in Malta. Paul I ordered a secret plan for a Russo-French expeditionary force to take possession of British assets in India, later referred to as the Indian March of Paul. Though it came to nothing, it may well have been the progenitor of the alarms around the Great Game involving India.

The situation improved somewhat as Pitt worked to put together a new coalition against France, and Russia and Britain joined in alliance in 1805. Henry Kissinger writes that, in bringing about this alliance,

Pitt now found himself in much the same position vis-à-vis Alexander as Churchill would find himself vis-à-vis Stalin nearly 150 years later. He desperately needed Russian support against Napoleon … On the other hand, Pitt had no more interest than Churchill would later have in replacing one dominant country with another, or in endorsing Russia as the arbiter of Europe.³

The alliance, though outlasting Pitt, who died in 1806, was to be short-lived.

Following defeat by France at the Battle of Friedland, Russia signed the Treaty of Tilsit in July 1807, which obliged it to cease maritime trade with Britain – part of Napoleon’s plans to isolate the latter through his so-called Continental Blockade. By then, Canning was foreign secretary, having been appointed by Prime Minister Lord Portland in March 1807. Though Canning had not served in the armed forces, he had some relevant experience, having been both paymaster of the forces (1800–1) and treasurer of the navy (1804–6). As foreign secretary, he was astute about the significance of the use of military power. Early in that first term, he asked the king to write a personal letter of flattery to the tsar, and in September 1807 he authorised the seizure of the Danish Navy, thereby helping sidestep the intentions of Napoleon, who wanted Denmark to pledge its fleet to France – such was Canning’s answer to more timid British politicians. Britain needed to keep open the sea lanes in the North and Baltic Seas. This incident did, however, spur Tsar Alexander I to declare war on Britain. Yet war was never actively prosecuted, and both sides limited their response, resulting primarily in some minor naval engagements in the Baltic and Barents Seas. By 1810, as Russia’s relationship with France had become strained, trade between Britain and Russia began to pick up again.

A key, concurrent theme in Canning’s career was to be his rivalry with Castlereagh, then secretary of state for war and the man responsible for the advancement of the Duke of Wellington’s (Lord Arthur Wellesley’s) military career, a man who would also become an opponent of Canning’s. On the surface, it appeared that personal relations were not too bad. In April 1809, Canning spoke in Castlereagh’s defence when he faced a charge of corruption in the House of Commons and again on a different charge when even Wilberforce voted against Castlereagh. Canning, however, was manoeuvring behind the scenes and putting blame for setbacks in the war in the Peninsula and in Holland on Castlereagh. Canning then made a deal with Prime Minister Portland, who was not in good health, that he would remove Castlereagh from office. When he heard of this, Castlereagh resigned. The rivalry between the two men culminated in a duel at dawn on 21 September 1809. Both survived, but it would temporarily finish both their political careers. Indeed, Castlereagh’s impetuous demand for a duel was an early sign of his later instability and suicide.⁴ Canning, who had never fired a shot in his life, had no alternative but to accept the challenge. Both missed with their first shot; one assumes neither wished to kill the other, since most duels were about honour, not death. But on the second attempt, Canning was shot in the thigh. Still, Castlereagh walked Canning to a neighbouring house on Putney Heath for treatment. Wellington’s role in Canning’s dubious dealings with Portland is obscure, but Wellington wrote to Castlereagh describing Canning’s behaviour as one of ‘Indignation, Ambition, Want of Judgement, Vanity’.⁵ Wellington later opposed many of Canning’s policies as foreign secretary and prime minister.

On Portland’s death, it was Spencer Perceval – not Canning – who became prime minister, and Canning refused to serve despite efforts to bring him back into government. Castlereagh even offered to step down to allow Canning to return as foreign secretary, suggesting he himself could become chancellor of the exchequer. In 1812, Perceval was assassinated by a lone aggrieved merchant and Lord Liverpool became prime minister. Russia and Britain were again allies against Napoleon, and they cooperated during the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15, where Castlereagh as foreign secretary firmly established his reputation as one of history’s great statesmen, negotiating with two other towering figures of diplomatic history, Bourbon France’s Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and Austria’s Prince Klemens von Metternich-Winneburg, to reorganise Europe after the Napoleonic Wars.

The Vienna negotiations set the scene for the ‘Great Powers’ – the Quadruple Alliance of victors, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria, importantly, and wisely, joined later by post-Napoleonic France – to dominate developments on the continent for the coming century. As with the treaties marking the ends of other major periods of European conflict, Westphalia (1648) and Utrecht (1713), the congress set out to prevent any one power emerging to dominate Europe. It saw a redrawing of Europe’s borders, stripped France of its conquests, and created new territorial units that were designed to be large enough to deter aggression though not to provide a challenge to the Great Powers. These units included the creation of a German Confederation and the establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. It also set up a system to resolve future disputes through the holding of congresses to resolve disputes and agree action. The legacy of Vienna has been long debated. Some see it as inherently conservative, designed to stifle change, particularly of the type seen in the French and American revolutions, and suppress legitimate nationalist movements. Others view it, at least in concept, as a precursor of the United Nations.

These are not questions to be addressed here. However, early on, there was a clear divergence between Britain and its fellow victors, creating a fault line that was to have a particular bearing on how and when the Great Powers were to intervene in disputes. Separately to the Quadruple Alliance, Tsar Alexander brought Russia, Prussia, and Austria together in what was known as the Holy Alliance. While significant for bringing together these three powers, which were generally regarded as conservative, the alliance was seen as largely meaningless in terms of substance, including by Castlereagh, who described it as ‘this piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense’,⁶ and Britain was to remain aloof from it. Britain and France, with their more liberal viewpoints, were frequently to find themselves holding differing views to the trio, particularly when it came to the independence of small states and the rights of minorities. We do not need to look beyond the border of Europe to see that such issues continue to trouble politicians and diplomats today, a subject I shall return to later.

Castlereagh’s lasting reputation stemmed from his handling of Europe as foreign secretary from 1812 to 1822 and his seminal State Paper of 5 May 1820, which was circulated to the principal governments in Europe. In this paper (which was subsequently endorsed by Canning in 1823, when he himself was foreign secretary), Castlereagh wrote: ‘The principle of one State interfering by force in the internal affairs of another, in order to enforce obedience to the governing authority, is always a question of the greatest possible moral as well as political delicacy.’⁷ We have seen this recently in the case of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Blair’s flawed intervention in Iraq in 2003 (see pages 18–19) when President Saddam Hussein was found not to have resumed the production of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. This action followed President George H. W. Bush’s well-designed intervention with a multilateral force to counter Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Following Iraq’s defeat in 1991, the UN located and destroyed Iraq’s chemical stockpile, and its biological and nuclear weapons programme was halted as required by the UN Security Council. Intervention in foreign affairs was a subject for debate as the nineteenth century progressed when Lord Palmerston, as we shall see later in this book, attracted criticism for his interventionist policies. I believe it is worth pausing to address the differing viewpoints on military intervention, given their overall relevance both to many of the historical events which follow and to a number of the challenges faced in our relationship with Russia today.

A book written in 1866 by Canning’s private secretary, Augustus Granville Stapleton, entitled Intervention and Non-Intervention; or, the Foreign Policy of Great Britain from 1790–1865, went beyond a personal critique of Palmerston’s foreign policy to build on Canning’s position. Given the height of Palmerston’s reputation at the time, Stapleton said he found it ‘no pleasant task’ to find fault with his approach, as he recognised he would find few sympathisers and run counter to public opinion. His case was that:

Of all the principles in the code of international law, the most important – the one on which the independent existence of all weaker States must depend – is this: no State has a right FORCIBLY to interfere in the internal concerns of another State, unless there exists a casus belli against it. For if every powerful State has a right at its pleasure forcibly to interfere with the internal affairs of its weaker neighbours, it is obvious no weak state can be really independent. The constant and general violation of this law would be, in fact, to establish the law of the strongest.

This principle as here laid down is the true principle of ‘non intervention’. But by leaving out the word forcible, and by then applying it, without limitation or explanation, much confusion respecting it has arisen.⁸

Palmerston had set out his own thinking on the difference between the theory and practice of non-intervention in the House of Commons on 20 May 1864 in response to a question about the situation in China.

My hon. Friend started with a general theory; but nothing is so liable to mislead as a general theory. My hon. Friend said that the principle upon which the British Government ought to act is that of non-intervention in the affairs of other States; a very plausible principle, and one which in many cases ought to be strictly adhered to; but my hon. Friend forgets that there are cases in which we have treaty rights – that there are cases in which we have national interests – and if his doctrine were to be applied rigidly and in every case, our treaty rights would be abandoned and our national interests would be sacrificed. It is not true that non-intervention is the principle invariably acted on by the British Government. We have interfered with great success in the affairs of other countries, and with great benefit to the countries concerned. We so interfered, for instance, in the affairs of Greece, and we established the independence of that State … We interfered in the Crimean war, and I do not think any man in this House will say that in that struggle we were unsuccessful. We have interfered in the affairs of China. Why? Because our treaty rights were endangered and our national interests were at stake.⁹

In the quote from Stapleton above, he refers to the need for an appropriate casus belli, or reason for going to war. This issue has kept philosophers occupied over the centuries, and I shal...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Frontmatter
• Introduction
• 1 George Canning and the Path to Navarino
• 2 The Untoward Event
• 3 British and Russian Relations with the Ottoman Empire, 1825–1914
• 4 Winston Churchill and the Russian Revolution
• 5 Churchill and Stalin: World War to Cold War
• 6 Face-Off in Europe
• 7 Russia on the Road to Reform
• 8 Yeltsin: A Free Spirit
• 9 Putin’s Russia
• 10 Britain, Russia, and the Wider World
• Notes
• Index