The Year Without a Summer (1816 to 1824)

0:00 It was 1816, and after almost 25 years of unrelenting warfare,

0:05 Europe had been at peace for one year.

0:09 The reprieve had been a blessing.

0:13 In England, one could see a familiar sight.

0:16 The wind was still bitterly cold and the sky was still grey,

0:20 but the snow was finally starting to retreat

0:23 from the hills and the trees had just begun to bloom.

0:26 Farmers shuffled about in their fields,

0:29 fretting over whether they planted too early.

0:31 They took inventory of their winter stores,

0:34 and wondered if they might go hungry before the first harvest came in.

0:39 These were all normal sights for the early spring,

0:42 but this year, something had gone terribly wrong.

0:46 This was all happening in June.

0:52 They called 1816 “The Year Without

0:59 a Summer.” It happened for complicated reasons,

1:03 but basically there was an unlucky combination of volcanic eruptions

1:07 that altered global weather patterns for 2 or 3 years.

1:11 In some parts of the world the changes

1:13 were relatively minor and went by unnoticed,

1:16 but in others, the changes were catastrophic.

1:19 In Europe, they happened to be catastrophic.

1:23 That July turned out to be the coldest July on record.

1:27 That summer turned out to be the coldest summer on record.

1:31 That decade of the 1810s would be the coldest decade in 500 years,

1:35 all the way back to the 1300s.

1:38 You might be thinking to yourself “okay,

1:41 so it was unusually cold,” but the problem waosn’t that it was cold.

1:46 The problem was that nothing grew.

1:49 Most plants don’t really grow unless the temperature is above 10°C.

1:54 In London, England, it’s below 10° for about 66 days on the average year.

2:00 In 1816, it was below 10° for 146 days,

2:05 which meant that there were significant non-growing periods

2:08 scattered throughout the spring and even the summer.

2:12 That fact alone would have been bad enough, but there was another issue.

2:16 The changes to the weather caused most

2:20 of Europe to be unusually overcast and rainy.

2:23 Farmers in France usually had to deal with 8

2:26 days of rain per month in the summer.

2:29 In 1816, they had 20 days of rain per month.

2:33 In England, crops had just begun to sprout

2:36 when they got 8 straight weeks of rain.

2:40 The rain led to flooding, and wherever there was flooding, crops failed.

2:44 Northern France and the Netherlands basically turned into one giant swamp.

2:51 On average, the cold temperatures and the rain pushed

2:54 the harvest one month later than it should have been.

2:57 In France, it was more like 2 months.

3:00 Farmers relied on early harvests to replenish their stores

3:03 and get them through the summer, but this year,

3:07 with the harvest pushed back a month or more,

3:10 you instead saw widespread famine in the early summer.

3:13 It became common to see people picking through

3:16 abandoned fields that had been lost to flood,

3:19 eating unripened or rotten plants straight out of the mud.

3:25 This was how Europe’s century of peace began.

3:29 After 25 years of war,

3:31 after sending an entire generation of young men into the meat grinder,

3:36 people were reduced to picking through the fields for rotten food.

3:41 What was it all for?

3:43 The environmental catastrophe was nobody’s fault,

3:46 but people were furious at their own governments for allowing this to happen.

3:51 And nowhere were they more furious than in France.

4:03 France was broke, the people were starving,

4:05 and the country was in the middle of an environmental catastrophe.

4:10 The restored King Louis XVIII had come to power promising

4:13 to lift a bunch of unpopular taxes on the poor,

4:16 but he was immediately forced to break that promise.

4:20 The grumbling began immediately.

4:23 Conditions in France had never been this bad under Napoleon.

4:28 As part of the compromise that restored the King to power,

4:31 France operated under a new Liberal constitution.

4:35 But the constitution was weak.

4:38 France now held regular elections,

4:39 but the King had the power to throw out the results whenever he wished.

4:44 His ministers did not answer to the public, they answered to him.

4:49 This actually made the new system weak and fragile.

4:53 Say what you will about the British system,

4:55 but at least the British Prime Minister took most of the heat.

4:58 If things were going really badly,

5:00 replacing the Prime Minister was an uncomplicated and yet meaningful act.

5:06 Now the French had a Prime Minister too,

5:08 but their Prime Minister was just an extension of the King’s will.

5:12 If things were going really badly,

5:14 replacing the Prime Minister would not be enough.

5:17 They may need to replace the King.

5:21 The restored King Louis XVIII wisely selected a centrist

5:26 Liberal named Richelieu as his first Prime Minister.

5:30 The centrists in France at this time

5:32 were extremely supportive of the new French Constitution,

5:35 were comfortable with many of the reforms of the French Revolution,

5:40 and also favoured the restoration of the monarchy.

5:43 They were trying to split the difference between the Ultra-Conservatives,

5:47 who favoured increasing the power of the King and the aristocracy,

5:51 and the Republicans, who wanted to disseminate more power to the people

5:56 and continue the work of the French Revolution.

6:00 The King favoured the Ultra-Conservatives,

6:02 but he correctly assessed that there would be a popular

6:05 uprising if he came out of the gates pushing their agenda.

6:09 The centrists would have to do for now.

6:14 The selection of Richelieu was perhaps the wisest decision the King ever made.

6:20 Richelieu was a steady hand, and inspired trust abroad.

6:25 In 1818, he successfully negotiated with the Great Powers

6:29 for the removal of the armies that were occupying France,

6:33 and for the end of France’s reparation payments.

6:37 In only 3 years, Richelieu had returned France

6:41 to its rightful place as an equal Great Power,

6:45 and it had all been done diplomatically.

6:48 France didn’t even have to fight a war

6:51 to re-establish itself on the international stage.

6:54 A small miracle.

6:57 But Richelieu was not rewarded for his hard work.

7:01 For 3 years in a row,

7:04 the French Republican Left made substantial gains in their annual elections.

7:10 The King was forced to dismiss Richelieu in favour

7:12 of a Prime Minister that could draw support from the Republicans.

7:17 Obviously this went against everything that the King stood for, and without

7:21 the King’s support this new Prime Minister

7:24 was not able to achieve anything meaningful.

7:26 Let’s pause here for now.

7:30 France had successfully re-integrated itself back into the international system

7:35 by forging a moderate path led by centrist Liberals like Richelieu.

7:41 France’s politics had settled around

7:44 a grand compromise between the royalist Ultra-Conservatives,

7:48 the Liberal centrists, and the Radical Republicans.

7:52 France would have a monarchy, and a Liberal Constitution,

7:56 and it would keep the reforms of the French Revolution.

8:01 France would have an aristocracy, but it would also have elections.

8:05 It wasn’t quite a democracy yet, but it was on that path.

8:10 Hold all of this in your head because

8:17 it will become important in a future video.

8:23 While Liberalism was taking hold in France,

8:26 that wasn’t necessarily true in the rest of continental Europe.

8:31 Over in the newly formed German Confederation,

8:33 German Nationalism was on the rise,

8:35 and the other Great Powers were getting nervous.

8:39 The two German Great Powers had different

8:42 reactions to the Nationalist movements within their borders.

8:46 In the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire, the instinct was to tamp it down.

8:51 In the mostly German-speaking Prussia, they decided to lean into it.

8:57 The King of Prussia sent Hardenberg, his Prime Minister and Foreign Minister,

9:01 to meet with Metternich, the Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Austria.

9:07 The Prussians wanted to reform the German Confederation,

9:10 to which both Prussia and Austria were members.

9:14 Riding the wave of German Nationalism,

9:17 the Prussians wanted to revive talks of a united German Empire,

9:21 uniting the German-speaking peoples of central Europe under one state.

9:27 This new state would instantly become a new Great Power,

9:30 with enough strength on their own to rival France.

9:35 Hardenberg proposed that Prussia and Austria

9:38 roll their territory into this new Empire, but if that proved to be impossible,

9:44 he alternately proposed that they could create a smaller

9:47 German Empire from the various small German states.

9:52 In this scenario, Prussia and Austria could remain independent and control

9:57 this new smaller German Empire as allies from the outside.

10:02 Metternich was horrified by this idea.

10:05 After such careful and difficult negotiation at the Congress

10:09 of Vienna to create the German Confederation,

10:11 Prussia wanted to blow it all up after only 3 years?

10:16 Why?

10:17 What was wrong with how the Confederation was working?

10:20 The German states had agreed to band together

10:23 for military defense and to resist outside meddling.

10:27 It was working.

10:28 Central Europe was at peace.

10:30 Prussia and Austria had the strength and the leverage

10:33 to force their tiny German allies to do whatever they wished.

10:37 Wasn’t that enough?

10:40 Why on Earth would Prussia want to start negotiations all over again?

10:45 Metternich’s analytical mind went to work.

10:49 Both Prussia and Austria controlled

10:52 substantial Polish-speaking provinces in the east.

10:55 If their new German Empire was home to a large Polish population,

11:00 it’s obvious what would happen next, isn’t it?

11:03 Poland would ask to join the German Empire.

11:07 Don’t you think the Tsar of Russia would have something to say about that?

11:11 The Tsar of Russia was the King of Poland,

11:13 he had threatened a war in order to pull

11:16 Poland into Russia’s sphere of influence only 3 years earlier.

11:20 The new German Empire would instantly be on the brink of war.

11:25 To what purpose?

11:27 Because a bunch of young Germans in Berlin got caught up in the nationalist

11:31 mood of the moment and thought that a German Empire sounded cool?

11:36 What a mess.

11:38 In order to appease Hardenberg and the German Nationalists back in Prussia,

11:44 Metternich proposed some minor reforms to the existing German Confederation so

11:48 that it might feel a little more like a unified Empire.

11:53 The Confederation would operate a federal

11:56 secret police to monitor any revolutionary activity.

12:00 To the same end, freedom of the press would

12:02 be standardized across the different German states and heavily restricted.

12:07 Similarly, student associations at Universities,

12:10 traditionally a friendly home to revolutionary thought,

12:14 would be outlawed across the Confederation.

12:17 To allow for all of this, the Confederation as a whole would now be able

12:21 to force individual states to modify their domestic

12:24 laws in the name of preserving order.

12:27 Of course in practice these modifications would not

12:30 be coming out of the small German states.

12:33 The modifications would be coming out of Prussia or Austria.

12:38 All of these reforms have a certain flavour to them, don’t they?

12:42 Metternich was the conservative architect of the post-war order,

12:46 and it’s clear where his priorities lay.

12:50 His singular focus was on preventing

12:53 a French-style Revolution from breaking out in Germany.

12:56 An understandable fear having just lived through 25 years of war,

13:00 but I would argue that it was a preoccupation that drove him to distraction.

13:06 We have the advantage of knowing what would happen in the future,

13:10 and we know that debate over a potential German Empire

13:14 would be one of the key questions of the 19th century.

13:18 Metternich had no way of knowing this, but there

13:21 would be 3 wars fought over this issue,

13:23 to say nothing of what happened in the 20th century, my God.

13:27 I have no idea if Metternich’s intervention

13:30 at this point could have prevented any of those wars,

13:33 but I do know that Metternich was a lot smarter than me,

13:36 and when presented with this problem, he totally shrugged it off.

13:40 He was so distracted thinking about 18th century France

13:44 that he wasn’t really thinking about 19th century Germany.

13:55 As part of the 1815 post-war settlement, Austria got control of Northern Italy.

14:02 As the Austrians moved into Northern Italy,

14:06 it fundamentally altered their national priorities.

14:09 Before the war, Austria had been a pretty conservative and inward-looking power.

14:15 Northern Italy turned Austria into an occupier and a colonizer.

14:20 A role that Austria was ill-equipped to handle.

14:23 Historian Paul W.

14:25 Schroeder argued that Austria’s expansion into Northern

14:29 Italy “forced Austria to lead and organize Italy,

14:33 yet did not really empower her to do so.” Austria had to pump Italy

14:38 for taxes just to offset the massive costs of occupying it in the first place.

14:44 It was like a snake eating its own tail.

14:46 The more difficult the occupation became, the more they taxed.

14:50 The more they taxed, the more difficult the occupation became.

14:54 Metternich was the mastermind of the occupation of Italy,

14:59 and as the occupation began to deteriorate,

15:02 he began to micromanage Italy’s domestic policies.

15:06 Another distraction.

15:07 He brought in a wave of Germans

15:10 from Austria to help administer the Italian occupation,

15:14 which only further alienated the Italians

15:16 and made the situation deteriorate even further.

15:19 On the one hand, he was telling the German

15:22 administrators to defer to the Italians whenever possible,

15:25 while on the other hand he was

15:28 having the Austrian bureaucracy micromanage everything from Vienna.

15:32 Colonization makes hypocrites of us all.

15:40 Dissent was growing, and soon Austria found itself sitting atop

15:45 a genuine nationalist movement calling for Italian unification.

15:50 This was way more than the Austrians had bargained for.

15:54 Metternich set up a robust spy network targeting Italian Nationalists,

15:58 but this did not make the Austrians any more popular.

16:02 Even the more moderate Italians who were willing to tolerate

16:06 the Austrian occupation began calling for a Liberal Italian Constitution.

16:11 This was not a thing that the conservative icon Metternich could contemplate.

16:17 Even geopolitically, the occupation of Italy made a mess of things for Austria.

16:23 The Italian Kingdom of Piedmont had been set up as kind of a neutral

16:27 buffer state so that Austria and France didn’t have to share a border,

16:32 but Austrian paranoia over Italian Nationalism and their goonish

16:37 spy network had soured relations with their Italian neighbour.

16:42 For their own protection,

16:44 Piedmont sought to establish deeper relations with France.

16:48 This sent the Austrians into a paranoid tailspin.

16:52 The French were establishing a beachhead in Italy, in Austria’s backyard.

16:56 Were the French behind the rising tide of Italian Nationalism?

17:00 The occupation of Italy had made Austria totally neurotic.

17:05 This was a lesson that every Great Power

17:09 would have to learn in the 19th century.

17:12 The Austrian expansion into Italy may have looked good on a map,

17:16 but the occupation did not generate any income,

17:20 did not increase Austrian military prowess,

17:22 and did not benefit Austria geopolitically.

17:25 In the end, it was a total distraction from the important

17:30 issues in Europe that were threatening the fragile peace.

17:34 With Metternich up to his eyeballs with problems of his own making,

17:38 it would fall to others to prevent the next Great Power Conflict.

17:43 The post-war international order faced its first major test in the early 1820s.

17:56 The King of Spain, restored to power after the defeat of Napoleon,

17:59 turned out to be an absolutist ruler in the old 18th century style.

18:06 This turned out to be a problem.

18:08 Eighteenth century Spain was dead and gone.

18:11 When Napoleon was in power he imposed a Liberal constitution upon Spain,

18:17 one that granted real political rights to its citizens.

18:21 Virtually all adult men were given the right to vote,

18:24 and with this change, political life within Spain flourished for the first time.

18:30 Elections, newspapers, political debate,

18:31 all of these things popped up within a few years, and the people loved it.

18:37 So when the absolutist Spanish King was restored to the throne,

18:41 his first move was to tear up the Spanish Constitution

18:45 and return things to how they had been in the 18th century.

18:50 The Spanish Legislature,

18:51 which was full of proud Spanish Liberals who loved their new Constitution,

18:57 were extremely vocal in their opposition.

19:00 Radical Republicans and Revolutionaries quickly joined

19:03 forces with the more moderate Liberals,

19:06 which created a genuine political movement.

19:09 Pretty soon, even generals in the Royal Army were coming

19:12 out in support of the Liberal Legislature and the Constitution.

19:17 The King was losing control of the country.

19:20 Virtually overnight, Spain was on the brink of civil war.

19:30 At the urging of his advisors,

19:33 the King reluctantly- very reluctantly- stepped back from his position.

19:39 He would sign onto the Liberal Constitution.

19:41 The King of Spain would become significantly less powerful,

19:44 and most of the business of the country

19:47 would be run through the Spanish Legislature,

19:49 which would be freely elected by the people.

19:52 Spain would become one of the most Liberal countries in Europe,

19:57 with stronger political institutions than even Britain.

20:02 The King said all of that, but he lied.

20:06 Instead, he began exerting his power by vetoing every

20:09 little thing that came out of the Liberal Spanish legislature.

20:14 He fired all of his elected Liberal ministers and replaced

20:18 them with unelected men who were loyal only to him.

20:22 He then appealed to the 5 Great Powers and called for an international

20:27 coalition to march into Spain and restore him to his full powers.

20:32 A civil war now seemed inevitable, and by making an international appeal,

20:38 the Spanish King was taking an awful risk.

20:41 Once the Great Powers got involved,

20:43 Spain could turn into the arena for the next Great Power Conflict.

20:47 The country could be destroyed.

20:55 Inspired by the courage and the success of the Spanish Liberals,

20:59 there were uprisings in Naples and Piedmont,

21:02 calling for Liberal Constitutions of their own.

21:06 This movement had jumped international borders,

21:08 which freaked out the Great Powers.

21:11 It was their worst fears realized.

21:14 It reminded them of the French Revolution.

21:17 Everybody needed to be careful here.

21:20 Metternich was particularly freaked out by the uprisings,

21:24 not only because of his conservative ideology,

21:27 but also because the countries in revolt happened to be Austria’s neighbours.

21:32 In correspondence with the other Great Powers,

21:35 he expressed his fears that this may spark a wave of Revolution across Europe.

21:41 Since Italy was in Austria’s sphere of influence,

21:44 the other Great Powers agreed to give Austria a free

21:48 hand to deal with the uprisings however they wished.

21:51 In 1821, Austria marched into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

21:55 to the south and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia to the west.

21:59 In both cases they came to the rescue of the existing Conservative regimes.

22:04 In short order, they put down the uprisings that were calling for new,

22:09 Spanish-style Liberal Constitutions.

22:11 The copycat uprisings were resolved, but the central problem of Spain remained.

22:23 Of all of the Great Powers,

22:25 Britain greeted the calls for a Spanish intervention with the most skepticism.

22:29 The Liberals in the British

22:31 Parliament wholeheartedly supported the Spanish Liberals,

22:34 but even the British Conservatives were sympathetic to their cause.

22:39 They had gone through their own crisis with the monarchy in the 17th century,

22:44 and even the most hardcore Conservatives believed

22:46 that Britain was better off for it.

22:49 They viewed what was happening in Spain as a part of a natural

22:53 political evolution that every country must go through at some point.

22:57 The Conservatives were in government in Britain,

23:00 and the Conservative Foreign Secretary,

23:02 Castlereagh, was dead set against any Spanish intervention.

23:07 He publicly declared that he had never intended the Quadruple Alliance,

23:11 by which he meant the 4 Great Powers that had brought down Napoleonic France,

23:16 to be a “union for the government of the world

23:20 or for the superintendence of the internal affairs

23:24 of other states.” He argued that the Spanish situation

23:27 was not a threat to the peace in Europe.

23:31 Prime Minister Liverpool agreed.

23:36 The Emperor of Russia, Tsar Alexander, was on the opposite end of the spectrum.

23:41 He believed that the uprising in Spain

23:44 was the result of a coordinated international conspiracy,

23:48 and that this conspiracy was an active threat to European stability.

23:54 He was fully prepared to mobilize the Russian army and march

23:57 it all the way across Europe in support of the Spanish King.

24:04 This freaked everybody out even more than the uprisings in Italy did.

24:09 Nobody- and I mean nobody- wanted this.

24:14 Metternich was particularly disturbed.

24:16 He wanted to restore the Spanish King to his full powers,

24:19 but not if it meant having the Russian army muddy their boots all over Europe.

24:26 For some time, nobody was quite sure what to do about Spain.

24:35 The Great Powers were all afraid to do anything,

24:37 and hoped that maybe Spain would just come to a compromise on their own.

24:44 During this pause, something unexpected happened.

24:50 British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh unexpectedly took his own life.

24:54 He was replaced by a politician named George Canning.

24:59 Internationally, the news came as a thunderbolt.

25:04 Castlereagh and Metternich had a special relationship,

25:06 and the two were kinda the co-authours of the post-war international system.

25:12 Now Metternich was on his own.

25:14 He had no idea how this new

25:21 fellow Canning might approach the post-war settlement.

25:27 This news was equally distressing to Britain’s political class.

25:32 The current government was a moderate Conservative government,

25:35 and Castlereagh had been thought of as a pragmatic

25:38 Conservative that had good relations with the British Liberals.

25:43 Canning had a different reputation.

25:44 He was known as a Conservative-Conservative, kind of an attack dog,

25:50 rabidly ideological and not that well disposed

25:53 toward the moderates currently leading the government.

25:56 Castlereagh and Canning never really saw eye-to-eye.

26:00 In fact, Castlereagh… um, how do you say this, shot him.

26:06 Things got so heated at one point during

26:09 the war that the two exchanged pistol shots.

26:11 Canning lost.

26:13 So you can understand everybody’s surprise when

26:17 Canning replaced his longtime enemy as Foreign Secretary.

26:21 Many legitimately wondered whether Canning would tear up all

26:24 of Castlereagh’s peace agreements and throw British foreign policy into chaos.

26:31 But everybody was wrong about Canning.

26:35 Everybody.

26:36 In the immortal words of Robert Caro, power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals.

26:42 What did Canning’s newfound power reveal about him?

26:47 Well, before Castlereagh’s death, Castlereagh had been consumed with the project

26:52 of disentangling Britain from continental European affairs.

26:56 Castlereagh didn’t want to be sending the British army all over Europe to put

26:59 down minor uprisings from people that were

27:02 only asking for quite sensible reforms.

27:04 To the surprise of all of his contemporaries,

27:08 the supposed ideological attack dog Canning shared that vision.

27:12 No armies in Europe.

27:14 In fact, Canning went even further.

27:17 He shared Castlereagh’s belief that British prosperity depended

27:20 upon how well they did out in the colonies,

27:24 but unlike Castlereagh, he thought that trade, rather than colonialism,

27:29 was really the thing that set Britain apart.

27:32 Colonies were only useful in so far as they facilitated trade,

27:35 they were not an end unto themselves.

27:38 To that end, British interests lay in the pursuit of peace.

27:44 Peace facilitated trade, and trade made Britain prosperous.

27:49 Unlike his predecessor, Canning was agnostic when it came to the colonies,

27:54 and outright noninterventionist when it came to war.

27:58 This makes Canning pretty unique in an era

28:01 that was dominated by colonial obsession.

28:04 Colonialism can make a country prosperous, but it can also be a trap.

28:09 Canning was one of the few people who could see this clearly.

28:14 There is one other thing that set Canning apart.

28:16 He was a deeply committed slavery abolitionist.

28:20 This didn’t make his life any easier,

28:22 it was a controversial stance for a British Conservative to take,

28:26 and in fact most abolitionists lived in the Liberal Whig party.

28:30 Canning just felt it deep in his bones, which makes him cool,

28:33 or at least as cool as a 19th century British politician can be.

28:38 British politicians of this era liked to talk

28:41 a big game when it came to political rights,

28:44 but unlike many of his contemporaries,

28:47 including his predecessor Castlereagh, Canning wasn’t a goddamned hypocrite.

28:58 Canning had just become Foreign Secretary

29:01 when the Spanish Crisis finally boiled over.

29:04 In 1823 the Spanish Legislature,

29:06 backed by the military, removed the King from power.

29:10 The victorious Spanish Republicans got very excited by this move,

29:15 and began calling for a Revolutionary Spanish Republic.

29:20 This was bad.

29:21 A Spanish Revolution so soon after the French Revolution

29:24 threatened to plunge all of Europe into war again.

29:28 The Great Powers would have preferred to sit back

29:30 and wait for Spain to resolve its own crisis,

29:33 but they couldn’t ignore this development.

29:36 France acted first.

29:38 After briefly consulting with the other Great Powers,

29:41 the Conservative King of France sent the French Army into Spain.

29:46 Every other Great Power signed off on this intervention.

29:50 Everyone except Britain.

29:53 Metternich signed off on the intervention, but he wasn’t happy about it.

29:56 The international system was on the brink of collapse.

30:00 One false move now and all of Europe would be at war.

30:10 France restored the Spanish King to the throne,

30:12 and then urged him to hammer out a compromise with the Spanish Liberals.

30:17 This was their big plan to resolve the crisis.

30:20 Give the King everything he wanted,

30:22 and then say “pretty please will you do the thing that you

30:25 have been refusing to do all along?” Why would he do that?

30:30 It was an incoherent plan, and it turned out to be a catastrophic failure.

30:36 Having received from the French everything he wanted,

30:39 the Spanish King refused to even meet with his political opponents.

30:44 Not only that, but now the Spanish Liberals, Republicans,

30:48 and Revolutionaries knew that there could

30:50 be no political solution to this crisis.

30:53 Any negotiated settlement would just be thrown out

30:56 by the Spanish King and the French Army.

30:58 Now the only way forward was through force of arms.

31:03 It really was a bone-headed move by the French.

31:07 They had hoped to force a compromise, but instead,

31:10 they had picked sides in a civil war

31:13 and were now stuck occupying parts of Spain.

31:21 This was the first great test for the new British Foreign Secretary Canning.

31:25 In a speech before Parliament,

31:27 he reaffirmed British neutrality over this matter,

31:31 but noted at the end of his speech that he dearly hoped that the Spanish

31:36 Liberals would be victorious in their struggle against

31:39 the tyrannical Spanish King and the French Army.

31:43 This was a shocking statement to the other Great Powers.

31:46 They had all assumed that they were all on the same page, but apparently not!

31:51 Apparently the conservative government in Britain was sympathetic

31:54 to the Spanish Liberals and Republicans and Revolutionaries!

31:58 It was a clever move by Canning.

32:01 It sent a strong signal to the other

32:03 powers that they could not necessarily count

32:06 on British support if they wanted to march

32:09 all over Europe putting down Liberal uprisings.

32:12 If they pulled a stunt like this again,

32:14 they might find Britain on the other side of the fight.

32:18 British Liberals, who up until now had looked at Canning with trepidation,

32:23 heaped praise upon the Conservative Foreign Secretary for orienting

32:28 Britain as a defender of Liberal movements all across Europe.

32:33 British Liberals were now confident that they had

32:36 one of their own in the Foreign Office.

32:38 Out on the streets, the people rushed to support Canning’s declaration.

32:43 Only 8 years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars,

32:47 the question on everybody’s mind was would

32:50 France’s recklessness lead to another Great Power Conflict?

32:55 The consensus on the streets was that by standing up to France and those other

33:00 European tyrants who were eager to invade

33:03 their neighbours over petty political disputes,

33:05 Canning was the only person working to prevent another war.

33:10 This made him unexpectedly popular with the British people.

33:15 Before the speech, there had been

33:17 a whisper campaign to remove Canning from power.

33:19 After the speech, he was untouchable.

33:30 In the midst of all the chaos,

33:33 something special was happening out in the Spanish colonies.

33:36 In rapidfire succession, the following Spanish colonies declared independence.

33:42 Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Peru.

33:47 Ecuador, Bolivia, and Uruguay would declare independence a little bit later,

33:51 as would the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

33:55 South America was having a moment, you might say.

33:59 While all of this was going on, the Spanish King, backed by France,

34:04 predictably refused to negotiate with any of the South American Revolutionaries.

34:09 He refused to make even symbolic concessions

34:11 that might have kept them under the Spanish Crown.

34:16 Canning saw an opportunity.

34:18 He wanted Britain to be the first to recognize these newly independent states.

34:23 He believed that having some friends in South America might prove to be

34:29 a useful counterbalance against any other power trying to push into the region.

34:34 And there was one other thing.

34:36 Canning mistrusted the French.

34:37 When it came to Spain, their true intentions were not yet clear.

34:42 Why would they recklessly march into Spain like that?

34:46 It made no sense.

34:47 Canning feared that they may try to restart the lost French

34:52 Empire by seizing all of Spain’s colonies in the name of stability.

34:57 If Canning saw to it that these newly independent states were

35:01 recognized by the British government and supported by the British fleet,

35:05 maybe France would think twice before doing something foolish like that.

35:10 Canning began the process of recognizing the new South American states,

35:14 and sent a message to France saying that any French adventurism

35:19 in South America would be interpreted by Britain as an act of war.

35:24 The French fell all over themselves assuring

35:27 Canning that this was never their intention.

35:30 Regardless as to whether that was true or not,

35:33 they heard the message loud and clear.

35:35 Canning’s diplomatic maneuver was remarkably successful.

35:39 At a later international conference,

35:42 the question of reconquering Spain’s lost colonies was floated.

35:46 When France informed the other Great Powers of Britain’s threat,

35:50 the matter was immediately dropped.

35:53 Canning’s threat worked.

35:54 Peace in South America was preserved at no cost to Britain.

35:59 The other Great Powers were also put on notice.

36:02 If they wanted to go around the world opportunistically snapping up colonies,

36:05 they would need to go through Britain first.

36:08 Pax Britannica at its finest.

36:13 At this time I would like to ask all Americans to leave the room.

36:24 Shortly after the wave of revolutions in South America,

36:31 Canning began collaborating with the American

36:35 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

36:38 What came out of this collaboration was the Monroe Doctrine in 1823.

36:43 The Monroe Doctrine, really developed by Secretary of State Adams,

36:47 stated “the American continents[...] are henceforth not

36:50 to be considered as future subjects for colonization

36:53 by any European power.” The funny thing

36:57 about this declaration was that at the time, it was completely unenforceable.

37:01 Or, I should say, it was completely unenforceable by the Americans.

37:06 But you know who could enforce it?

37:08 The British.

37:10 The Monroe Doctrine declared no new colonization of North or South America.

37:16 No new colonization meant that the current colonization was locked in place.

37:22 Who did that help?

37:25 Britain at this time was by far the #1 European power in North America,

37:29 and with these new Revolutions in the Spanish colonies,

37:32 it was fast becoming the #1 European power in South America.

37:37 If Spain or France or any other power attempted to move back into South America,

37:42 the Monroe Doctrine stated that the United States would resist,

37:46 which in effect meant that the United States would defend British interests.

37:54 Pushing the Americans in this direction was a master stroke by Canning.

37:57 They didn’t really understand at the time that this declaration committed

38:01 the American Navy to defending British sugar plantations on Jamaica, but it did.

38:07 And in exchange for this, the British gave the Americans nothing.

38:12 Canning said of the Monroe Doctrine when it was first announced,

38:16 “the effect of the ultra-liberalism of our Yankee

38:20 co-operators on the ultra-despotism of our[...] allies,

38:25 gives me just the balance I wanted.” By this he meant that yes,

38:30 the British and the French were playing nice at the moment,

38:33 but if that ever changed, the Americans would serve as a useful

38:37 counterbalance against French overseas expansion.

38:40 Canning felt free to speak more plainly a year later,

38:44 after all the dust had settled.

38:46 He described the Monroe Doctrine as “an act which will make a change in the face

38:52 of the world almost as great as the discovery of the continent now set free.

38:58 The Yankees will shout in triumph,

39:03 but it is they that lose most by our decision.”

39:10 It must be said that Canning didn’t get everything he wanted.

39:14 The Monroe Doctrine contained a massive

39:17 loophole that allowed for American colonialism, which did make Canning nervous,

39:22 especially when he looked at the American ambitions

39:25 toward the Caribbean and the newly independent Mexico.

39:29 But as a general principal, Canning had secured American support against any

39:35 European power moving into North or South America.

39:38 It was a diplomatic coup for the British.

39:43 Okay, the Americans can come back into the room now.

39:52 The Great Powers never went to war over Spain, but it was a very near thing.

40:03 France would end their misguided occupation after 5 years,

40:08 and political instability within Spain would persist for the next 40 years.

40:14 Or 80 years.

40:16 Or 120 years.

40:17 Or… let’s just say that political instability in Spain would persist.

40:23 However, the Spanish Crisis proved that the post-war

40:27 peace was more fragile than anybody realized.

40:31 The Great Powers walked away having learned several lessons.

40:35 First, Metternich was beginning to lose his grip on Europe.

40:39 He had been the Great Man during the post-war settlement, but after 8 years,

40:44 he was becoming increasingly distracted by the Austrian occupation

40:48 of Italy and by the festering issues within the German Confederation.

40:53 The international system that he had helped design was still intact,

40:58 but with France’s reckless invasion of Spain it had entered a new phase,

41:02 one where he was no longer the main character.

41:07 Second, Britain under Canning’s stewardship had fully

41:10 emerged as the greatest of the Great Powers.

41:15 The Spanish Crisis taught everybody that when Britain put its foot down,

41:20 every other Great Power hesitated.

41:22 It was a new world.

41:25 And then lastly, there was France.

41:28 What to say about France?

41:31 They got off to such a great start by successfully

41:35 reintegrating themselves back into the international system under Richelieu,

41:38 but after that, it seems like they were

41:40 bonked over the head with an idiot stick.

41:43 Well, in a way they were.

41:46 I’ve talked around this point up until now,

41:49 but right around the time that France recklessly invaded Spain,

41:53 the government of France underwent an abrupt ideological shift.

41:58 They abandoned the grand compromise that had restored the monarchy to power,

42:03 and decided to lurch quite suddenly in a Conservative and autocratic direction.

42:10 This decision set up a chain of events in France

42:14 that would have profound consequences for the rest of the 19th century.

42:41 And we’ll discuss all of that in the next video.