Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of genealogical tables
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction. Hanover: the missing dimension
- 2 Hanoverian nexus: Walpole and the Electorate
- 3 Pitt and Hanover
- 4 George III and Hanover
- 5 The Hanoverian dimension in early nineteenth-century British politics
- 6 The end of the dynastic union, 1815–1837
- 7 The university of Göttingen and the Personal Union, 1737–1837
- 8 The confessional dimension
- 9 Hanover and the public sphere
- 10 Dynastic perspectives
- 11 British maritime strategy and Hanover 1714–1763
- 12 Hanover in mid-eighteenth-century Franco-British geopolitics
- 13 Hanover and British republicanism
- Index
11 - British maritime strategy and Hanover 1714–1763
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of genealogical tables
- List of tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction. Hanover: the missing dimension
- 2 Hanoverian nexus: Walpole and the Electorate
- 3 Pitt and Hanover
- 4 George III and Hanover
- 5 The Hanoverian dimension in early nineteenth-century British politics
- 6 The end of the dynastic union, 1815–1837
- 7 The university of Göttingen and the Personal Union, 1737–1837
- 8 The confessional dimension
- 9 Hanover and the public sphere
- 10 Dynastic perspectives
- 11 British maritime strategy and Hanover 1714–1763
- 12 Hanover in mid-eighteenth-century Franco-British geopolitics
- 13 Hanover and British republicanism
- Index
Summary
In the thirty years before 1714 the Royal Navy had become the most powerful naval force in the world. It was practically unchallenged in the Atlantic and a force to be reckoned with in other waters. It had proved the shield of the state in defending the home islands and Britain's expanding trade, as well as its most potent sword. Superficially at least, the gains with which Britain emerged from the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 – Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland – were the fruits of her naval power. Queen Anne summed up this confidence in her last address to parliament in March 1714: ‘Our situation points out to us our true interest, for this country can flourish only by trade and will be most formidable by the right application of our Naval force.’ The navy was by then a defining element in British political identity.
In recent years, the factors underlying British foreign policy under the first two Hanoverian monarchs have been investigated in some detail. We now have a much richer picture of the period between 1714 and 1760. On the whole, there remains a broad consensus among historians that Hanover exercised an initial but declining influence on foreign policy as an overtly maritime or ‘blue-water’ strategy, exemplified by the vision of William Pitt, was consolidated during the middle decades of the eighteenth century.
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- The Hanoverian Dimension in British History, 1714–1837 , pp. 252 - 274Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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