‘Peace and Tranquillity’

Abstract

This chapter recounts the gestation of English and British foreign policy into two competing strategies between 1689 and 1739: the interventionist continentalism of the Court Whigs and the blue-water policy of the Tory and Country Whig factions, each of which was accompanied by a distinctive attitude towards the relationship between British and European culture. It shows how, in parallel with the consolidation of Court Whig supremacy in England, continentalism had triumphed in British America by the end of the Wars of the Grand Alliance (1689–1714) and continued to hold sway throughout the interwar years 1714–39.