The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and the Decline of British Opposition to the Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1857-60

Abstract

T HAT THE Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and its subsequent modification between 1850 and 1860 reflected significant changes in Great Britain's American policy is well known. The treaty was originally intended by the British government not only to secure the free and equal use of a future interoceanic canal but, more generally, to present a formal barrier to the territorial expansion of the United States into Central America. It is equally clear, however, that the concessions which were made in 1859 to the American interpretation of the treaty registered a significant decline in that opposition. What is not clear is the extent of this change of policy and the process by which it came to be accepted. In 1856, as a consequence of the Crampton recruiting crisis,' there was a striking attack, in parliament and in the press, upon the old policy in Central America. It was not expedient, the argument went, to prejudice the actual benefits of normal relations by the pursuit of the illusory rewards of traditional policy; nor, indeed, was it in the true interest of Great Britain to maintain disorderly Latin American regimes in preference to vigorous North American rule.2 There can be little doubt that it was their respect for arguments like these which, in part at least, led Lord Malmesbury to attempt in 1858-59 and Lord John Russell to bring to a successful conclusion in 1859 this phase of the Central American question. But, in view of the denial that such a change as the abandonment of opposition to American expansion was envisaged by Lord Palmerston at the close of his first administration in 1858,3 it is not clear how far it extended beyond a particular Tory government and an individual Whig foreign secretary who happened to have an unusually independent control over foreign policy in Palmerston's second ministry. The three letters printed below, however, show that the change was the result of a general decision by Palmerston and Lord Clarendon in December 1857 and that it was they who initiated the policy later followed by Lord Malmesbury. The role of the 1856 outburst in this change should probably not be stressed too much. Palmerston had long been aware that public opinion would not tolerate the counter-colonization or the force which alone could provide effective opposition to American expansion; the signature of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty itself was evidence of that. At the end of 1857 he did admit that there might well be some truth in the economic arguments 1 Late in 1855 John Crampton, British minister in AWashington, solicited recruits to serve in the British forces in the War in the Crimea, the United States requested his recall, but the British government refused to act. 2 See Mary W. Williams, isthmian diplomacy, 1815-1915 (Washington, 1916), pp. 204-18; J. Fred Rippy, Latin America in world politics (New York, 1928), pp. 103-5. 3 R. W. Van Alstyne, Anglo-American relations, 1853-1857, Anmerican historical review, XLII (1937-38). 492-93.