Freedom of navigation and a trading nation

• SATSUMA Shinsuke

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• 航海の自由と通商の国民
• A reexamination of political debates over the War of Jenkins’ Ear
• ジェンキンズの耳戦争期のブリテンにおける政治的言説の再検討

Abstract

The 1739 war between England and Spain, known as the War of Jenkin’s Ear, has been regarded as being caused by the opposition’s propaganda campaign against the Walpole ministry and the popular clamour it inflamed.<br> Consequently, historians have often dealt with the political debate conducted during this period in the context of a search for the War’s causes. More recently, in terms of political history, K. Wilson has analyzed this debate in order to show new features relating to the participation of extra-parliamentary groups in British politics during the mid-eighteenth century. Now, in light of the progress being made in the research on early modern fiscal-military states, the present article reexamines the political debate over the conflict with Spain from a new perspective and with a different purpose: to reveal the logic and reasoning by which British politicians justified or criticized the efforts of the armed forces, in particular, the British Navy.<br> Using as primary sources both contemporary newspapers and pamphlets and Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England, which records debates in both Houses during that time, the author analyzes the political discussion conducted over four years between early 1737, when the issue of “Spanish depredations” began to be introduced into Parliament, and the end of 1740, when the War of Jenkin’s Ear merged into the War of the Austrian Succession. The analysis includes not only arguments presented by the opposition, but also those on the government’s side, which have yet to be fully examined. The author also points to a correlation between arguments in Parliament and those appearing in publications outside of Parliament.<br> The analysis is intended to shed more light on 1) how both the government and opposition sides invoked broad national economic interests, including those of landed elites as well as of merchants, in order to support their claims; 2) that the opposition criticism was levelled not at the Navy itself, but at the cost-effectiveness of its operations, unlike its views on the standing army, whose very existence often attracted harsh criticism; and 3) the process in which both the opposition and the government came to advocate “freedom of navigation” as an indisputable British right, in order to justify the war against Spain.

Journal

• SHIGAKU ZASSHI

  SHIGAKU ZASSHI 129 (2), 1-36, 2020

  The Historical Society of Japan

Details

• CRID: 1390852271223033600
• NII Article ID: 130008086160
• DOI: 10.24471/shigaku.129.2_1
• ISSN: 24242616
• ISSN: 00182478
• Text Lang: ja
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • CiNii Articles
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed