ABSTRACT.In the 1815 settlement Britain was able to achieve a stable Europe in which minimal naval intervention sufficed to keep the great military powers in balance, while Britain herself concentrated on rebuilding her economic strength and reducing the debts inherited from the war years. After the loss of America, British statesmen aimed for economic influence rather than direct rule of overseas territory.
RÉSUMÉ.Avec le traité de 1815, la Grande-Bretagne sut parvenir à l'établissement d'une Europe stable, dans laquelle une intervention navale réduite suffisait à maintenir l'équilibre entre les grandes puissances militaires. Cela lui permit de se concentrer, quant à elle, sur la reconstruction de sa force économique et sur la réduction des dettes engendrées par ces années de guerre. Suite à la perte de l'Amérique, les citoyens britanniques préférèrent s'attacher à l'influence économique plutôt qu'au contrôle direct de territoires étrangers.
The days of England's glory have their number, and the period of her decline will at length arrive.
Between 1815 and 1850 Britain was a sea power, an imperial state in which the sea dominated national security, economic development and political culture. Yet this distinctive form of power, in which communications, capital and cruisers were the key instruments, was a response to weakness and defeat. Lacking the population to operate as a major European power, chastened by the experience of the American Revolution, British statesmen chose to depend on a limited war strategy of sea control, only engaging the Continent at critical maritime locations: Flanders, Lisbon, Copenhagen and Cadiz. Sea power and insularity enabled Britain to evolve strategic concepts and cultural forms that harnessed the asymmetric advantage of sea control to outmanoeuvre far stronge continental powers, primarily through maritime economic war. Ultimately, British security depended on a peaceful, balanced and stable European system.
SUSTAINING SEA POWER CONSTRUCTING STABILITY.
Britain celebrated her role in the downfall of Bonaparte as “The Sheet Anchor of Europe”, the powerful external agency that prevented the Continent from running onto the rocks of revolution or the shoals of imperial hegemony. Maritime power enabled Britain to rebalance and reinforce but not dominate. After the defeat of Napoleon British statesmen, anxious to reduce peace-time defence expenditure, used the peace conferences at Paris, Ghent and Vienna to create the diplomatic context for a unique sea-power empire.