Those in the UK who most strongly resist European integration hark back to an unspecified time in the past when England and its empire, run from its island fortress, stood apart - unconcerned and invincible in the face of continental affairs.
But the history of British foreign policy is not really the story of 'splendid isolation'. Isolation was never really practised by Britain, nor was it ever really a practical policy. Being an island nation, with trade as its lifeblood, Britain has never been shy of the need to engage with its neighbours. British policy as a result has generally pursued policies aimed at avoiding disputes and maintaining peace with or between neighbours to avoid the closing of borders, the raising of tariffs, and the conflicts that choke trade. As such, the European Union represents not the antithesis, but rather the realisation of British efforts - peace in Europe, with Britain playing a major role.
Early signs of this approach can be found in the wars between Britain and France - fought almost continuously from 1688 to 1815 - that spread across the Nine Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars. Despite the famous victories of British commanders like Marlborough, Nelson, and Wellington, during much of this era British influence was not military but rather diplomatic and economic.
For example, during the Napoleonic Wars, British land forces were laughably outnumbered by the armies of their European neighbours. The British army's most famous theatre of the era, the Peninsula War in Spain and Portugal, saw Wellington's small army enormously outnumbered by the French. Likewise, Wellington's most famous battle at Waterloo saw the British forces represent only half the number of those under Napoleon's command, even when it was supplemented by a mix of allied troops of Dutch, Belgian and German origin. Parity with Napoleon was only achieved by fighting alongside a similar sized Prussian force (Harvey, 2006).
Similarly, British opposition to the expansion of the German empire and its navy played an important role in its involvement in the Great War. British dominance at sea, the bedrock of its empire, was severely threatened by German efforts to become a colonial power. The ability of Britain to maintain its control of the seas, needed to protect its trade, would have been rocked had the German Empire succeeded in gaining hegemony in Europe. The solution was once more far more diplomatic than military, with Britain building a friendship with its old enemy France, and joining its entente with Russia (Massie, 1991).
Assuring the peace that allowed imperial trade to flourish, meant making alliances and deals with everyone who could be found, from the Spanish Partisans, to the Austrian and Russian emperors, and even to making peace and alliance with France, the oldest enemy. While it is true to say that British foreign policy of this era was at times pursued from a distance, it was always calculated to acknowledge that British power, its island and its trade routes, would best remain undisturbed by maintaining a balance between the European powers, maintaining peace on the mainland.
Achieving this meant constant engagement with Europe, rallying coalitions against those that threatened the peace; doing economic deals to keep other nations on side; even making friends with old enemies; and all of this conducted in Europe. The climax of the wars with France was the Congress of Vienna, a forum where the diplomatic fallout of war was debated. At the congress Britain's prize for the alliances it had built was the return to a Europe of peaceful and co-operating states - for a while at least - within which it played active role. The one thing that British foreign policy sought to avoid was becoming isolated.
As Britain once engaged with Europe to find diplomatic solutions and alliances to protect its trade by keeping Europe peaceable, it today plays an active part within the European Union. The legacy of those policies, of the Congress of Vienna, and of British interventions in the two world wars, where it joined with those who sought to defend peace and free trade, is the EU, and the major role that Britain plays in it.
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+ Robert Harvey's 'The war of wars: The epic struggle between Britain and France: 1789-1815'; Constable, 2006.
+ Robert K Massie's 'Dreadnought: Britain, Germany & the Coming of the Great War'; Jonathan Cape, 1992.
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