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.