Prussia, relations with

Prussia, relations with. Regular diplomatic contact between Britain and Prussia dates essentially from the Hanoverian succession. The two states were closely allied for most of the Seven Years War (1756–63), an alliance which allowed Britain to devote many of her resources to overseas expansion while Prussia preoccupied large French forces in Europe. Prussia and Britain were briefly allied against France in 1793–5, but their most significant collaboration occurred in 1815 when their armies defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. The British did not share the Prussian desire for a harsh peace against France in 1814–15, and Castlereagh briefly aligned Britain with Austria and France to reduce Prussian demands for Saxon territory. Rather he wanted a balance in Germany between the Prussians and the Habsburgs, hoping that together they might help to restrain France and Russia. He thus favoured a Prussian presence on the Rhine. Thereafter Prussia's association with the reactionary powers (Russia and Austria) usually discouraged friendship, although Prussia contributed to the isolation of France in the Near Eastern crisis of 1840. Britain's role in the Schleswig-Holstein question (1848–64) was understandably unpopular in Prussia, although from 1847 Palmerston intermittently showed interest in the emergence of a strong north German power which he hoped would improve the balance in continental Europe as a whole. His successors, despite periods of distrust of Bismarckian methods and Prussian militarism, broadly welcomed German unification in 1870–1 in the belief that this would make for stability in the heart of Europe.

C. J. Bartlett