About Canning House - History

Canning House is the home of the Hispanic and Luso Brazilian Council, a non-political, non-profitmaking organisation that was founded in 1943 to stimulate understanding between Britain, Spain, Portugal and Latin America.

George Canning

Canning House is named after George Canning, the first - and, so far, the only - British Foreign Secretary to devote a large proportion of his time and energies to the affairs of Latin America and to foresee the important political and economic role the Latin American states would one day play in the world.

The following is taken from a Lecture given by Professor Leslie Bethell in April 1970 to mark the Bicentenary of George Canning. He was then Lecturer in Hispanic American and Brazilian History at University College London. Professor Bethell is currently at St Antony's College Oxford:

On 12 December 1826, before a crowded House of Commons, George Canning, British Foreign Secretary since September 1822 and an accomplished orator, made what was perhaps his greatest and certainly his most famous speech in which he reviewed, and attempted to justify, the policies he has pursued during his four years at the Foreign Office. His proudest boast on that occasion - and the one for which he has been most remembered down the years - was that he personally had "called the New World into existence".

Canning was born on 11 April 1770 into an Ulster landed family and was sent to Eton and Oxford. After a brilliant university career he became a protégé of Pitt and entered the House of Commons in 1793 at the age of 23. For the remainder of his life his energies were devoted almost exclusively to politics. Politically talented, ambitious, self-seeking, always impatient for power (Pitt after all had been Prime Minister at 24) his main object, almost from the beginning, it seems, was the conduct of foreign policy. He served as under-secretary for foreign affairs for three years from 1796, but it was March 1807 before he became Foreign Secretary for the first time - in the Portland administration - at the height of the Napoleonic war.

After a change of Government, Canning proved to be an extremely able and imaginative Foreign Secretary, unusually successful in defending and promoting Britain's national interests.

When in August 1807 Napoleon issued an ultimatum to Dom João, Prince Regent of Portugal, that he must close his ports to English ships and bring Portugal into the Continental System aimed at destroying Britain's trade with Europe, or else face the consequences of a French invasion, Canning pressured Dom João into rejecting the ultimatum. He was able to do this by threatening on the one hand to destroy the Portuguese fleet in the Tagus (as he had already destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen) and seize Portugal's colonies if Dom João gave way, while promising on the other to renew Britain's existing obligations to defend the House of Braganza and its dominions against external attack if he stood firm. At the same time by a Secret Convention signed in October it was agreed that if Napoleon made it necessary the Portuguese court would withdraw temporarily with the Portuguese fleet to the Portuguese colony of Brazil. And when in November the French advanced on Lisbon the Portuguese court and administration did indeed seek refuge in Brazil, escorted across the Atlantic by four ships of the British navy.

In promoting and facilitating the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil, Canning was, of course, pursuing Britain's own interests, strategic (to keep the Portuguese fleet out of Napoleon's hands) - and commercial. Part of the price of British protection was to be the opening up of Brazil to direct British trade at a critical time: British goods were being excluded from Europe and were threatened with exclusion from North America. Brazil was itself potentially an important market. It was also a convenient back door to Spanish America. One of Dom João's first acts on arrival in Brazil in January 1808 was to open Brazilian ports to the trade of all friendly nations, which in practice meant British trade. It has been estimated that the total value of all British goods exported to Brazil in 1808 amounted to over £2 million - a figure not equalled for ten years.

The arrival of the Portuguese court had a profound effect on Brazil. Not only was the Portuguese colonial monopoly of trade ended, which represented a kind of economic independence, but Brazil also achieved a measure of political autonomy. Brazil was governed now from Rio de Janeiro not Lisbon and in December 1815 was elevated to the status of a kingdom equal with Portugal. Brazil, in other words, was no longer strictly a colony. The evolution of Brazil towards independence and the development of Brazilian self-consciousness were greatly accelerated. In so far as the transfer of the court had been essentially "a skilful manoeuvre of British diplomacy" Canning - as well as Napoleon - was indirectly responsible for these developments.

With regard to Spanish America, the British government always made it clear to Spain that whatever the outcome of the political struggle in Spanish America the colonial commercial monopoly could in no circumstances be restored. At the end of the European war Castlereagh refused to aid Spain against the insurgents and, more important, in a famous memorandum of August 1817 declared that Britain, whose navy controlled the Atlantic, would not allow other European powers to intervene in Spanish America on behalf of Spain. Thus, when the result of the revolutionary struggle was still in doubt and the revolutionary movements, after many setbacks, were being revitalised by the two great liberators, San Martín and Bolívar, the British navy stood between Spanish America and Europe.

Canning, who returned to the Foreign Office in September 1822, also immediately concerned himself with the Spanish American question. "We cannot too soon take some step directly towards South America", he wrote to Lord Liverpool on 21 October. And to Wellington on 8 November, "Every day convinces me more and more that the American questions are out of all proportion more important to us than the European, and that if we do not seize and turn them to our advantage in time we shall rue the loss of an opportunity never, never to be recovered."

There were British commercial interests to consider. British trade with Spanish America had vastly increased during the past decade and was confidently expected to go on increasing. Almost a hundred British commercial houses had been established in Spanish American cities. In 1820 more cotton goods had been exported to Latin America as a whole than to the United States. British capital was also being invested in Latin America and several Spanish American loans were being floated. It was therefore essential to put Anglo-Spanish American commercial and financial relations on a permanent and favourable footing by means of commercial treaties. It was important to have consuls to protect British lives and property and recognised authorities with whom to deal and from whom to demand redress of grievances. British merchants and manufacturers - in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc. - were beginning to press hard for recognition of the Spanish American republics. There was also the need to counter the growing influence in Latin America of the United States. In March 1822 President Monroe had asked Congress for funds to establish missions in five Latin American states and Canning became obsessed with Anglo-American rivalry - commercial, political and ideological - in Latin America. He dreaded "a division of the world into Europe and America, republic and monarchy, a league of worn out governments on the one hand and youthful stirring nations with the US at their head on the other".

After much political activity within the British Government and discussion with King George IV, in 1825 Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, which at the time comprised three-quarters of Spanish America, were recognised by means of the ratification of commercial treaties with Britain.

In January 1825 Canning wrote to his friend, John Hookham Frere, "The Ides of December... came and they are gone; and here am I still with the South American Question carried, non sine pulvere, but carried... the thing is done... an act which will make a change in the face of the world almost as great as that of the discovery of the continent now set free".

A year later, on 12 December 1826, in the House of Commons, as we have already seen, Canning was given an opportunity to defend the policies he had adopted towards France, Spain and Spanish America and declared, "I resolved that if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old". It is astonishing today to recall the effect of that statement.

The "most perplexing business of all" during these years was, however, in Canning's view, not the Spanish American question but that of Brazil. On September 1822 - just one week before Canning became Foreign Secretary - Dom Pedro, Dom João's eldest son, who had been left behind in Rio as Prince Regent when the Portuguese court finally returned to Lisbon in 1821, had declared Brazil's independence from Portugal. During 1821-2 the Portuguese had attempted to put the clock back and reduce Brazil, politically and economically, to its former colonial status. But Brazil had progressed too far during the thirteen years since the transfer of the court for anything less than complete political and economic equality with the mother country to be acceptable. A movement for independence gathered momentum and Dom Pedro chose to lead rather than be overwhelmed by it.

The British government had played no role in these events apart from throwing its weight on the side of Dom João's return home - with the purpose of averting, not precipitating, a break between Portugal and Brazil. In the first place, Portugal was too weak - militarily and financially - to reimpose its rule and Brazil was therefore de facto independent from the moment it declared its separation from Portugal. Secondly, Britain already had established political relations with Brazil as a result of the Portuguese court's residence there - the ambassador had returned to Lisbon with the court in 1821 but a consul-general (regarded as "a sort of chargé d'affaires") remained - and Brazil was by now Britain's third largest foreign market. Early recognition would consolidate Britain's political and economic predominance in Brazil. Thirdly, unlike Spanish America Brazil had maintained not only its territorial unity but also its monarchical institutions which Canning was anxious to preserve as an antidote to "the evils of universal democracy" on the continent and as a valuable link between the Old World and the New. Any undue delay in recognising the Brazilian empire might undermine the country's precarious unity and endanger its political institutions. Fourthly, and most immediately important, there was the slave trade question. Since Britain had itself declared the slave trade illegal in 1807 the international abolition of the trade had been a major aim of British policy. Canning was committed to the view that no state could be recognised which had not abolished the slave trade.

It became Canning's policy therefore to work for the acknowledgement by Portugal of Brazilian independence, so as not to endanger British commercial interests and political influence in Brazil. He had in mind in particular the fact that a commercial treaty signed by the Portuguese government in Rio in 1810 and accepted by the new Brazilian government came up for renewal in 1825 at which time negotiations with Brazil could no longer be avoided. When, towards the end of 1824, the lengthy and exceedingly complex negotiations between Brazil and Portugal which Canning had sponsored in London finally broke down Canning decided the time had come for Britain to act alone. Only then were the Portuguese government finally persuaded that recognition could no longer be avoided and was indeed in Portugal's own best interests. (Since the Brazilian emperor, Dom Pedro, was the heir to the Portuguese throne, the best chance of a future reunion of Portugal and Brazil lay in the continuation of the Brazilian monarchy). It was Sir Charles Stuart whom Canning sent on a special mission to Lisbon and Rio who negotiated and signed on behalf of Portugal the Treaty of August 1825 by which Portugal recognised Brazil (thanks to Canning's efforts, less than three years after Brazil's declaration of independence), thereby facilitating recognition by Britain (in 1826) and the other European powers. Canning's price for services rendered was, first, a preferential commercial treaty (the process begun in 1808 whereby Britain transferred its highly privileged economic position from Portugal to Brazil was thus successfully completed) and, secondly, a treaty abolishing the slave trade in 1830.

It remains to assess the true significance of Canning's diplomatic activity with regard to Latin America.

Canning, who was naturally and rightly more concerned with Britain's political and economic interests in Latin America than with Latin American independence, certainly did a great deal to enhance Britain's prestige throughout Latin America. He himself was - and is - esteemed as a great liberal statesman who understood and sympathised with the cause of Latin American independence and who did more than any other foreign statesman to make it a reality. But Britain's pre-eminence in Latin America during the 1820s - and throughout the 19th century - was not essentially the result of Canning's policies towards Latin American independence nor his own promotional efforts on behalf of Britain. It was the inevitable consequence of Britain's industrial, financial and naval power."