From Hope to Defensiveness: The Foreign Policy of a Beleaguered Liberal Spain, 1820–1823

Abstract

Abstract In 1820, the reinstatement of the Constitution of 1812 placed Spain at the head of the international political agenda, since it presented the first challenge to the status quo defined at the Congress of Vienna. During the following years, the great powers increased the pressure exerted on Spain’s Liberal regime, shifting from diplomatic pressure to the eventual French military intervention in 1823, which ruined hopes of a liberal political efflorescence in Europe. The object of this article is to systematise knowledge about Spain’s foreign policy during the so-called Liberal Triennium (1820–23), and to analyse its progress from an initial idealism, associated with prevailing Romanticism, to ultimate isolationism. This was a result of a lack of resources and also of inconsistency in Spain’s foreign policy, at a time when a well-defined international plan might have changed the fate of Spanish Liberalism. The article also pays special attention to the diplomatic relations between Spain and Great Britain, the only great power that did not pursue the marked hostility towards Spanish Liberalism displayed by the continental powers after 1820. Accordingly, most of the hopes of an increasingly besieged Liberal Spain were placed on Britain’s good offices and support.