EARLY BELGIAN COLONIAL EFFORTS - The University of Texas at ...

Henry John Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston, was one of the most
influential British foreign secretaries and prime ministers of the nineteenth century,
perhaps the height of Britain's power. Palmerston’s early governmental career spanned
approximately twenty years between 1807 and 1828 when he served as Secretary of
War and Chancellor of the Exchequer. Neither of these positions would have been
expected to produce one of the greatest foreign policy masters in British history. They
gave Palmerston an incredible sense of detail and comprehension, and this, along with
his incisive tongue, created an air of invincibility and fear unmatched by his
contemporaries, as he drove his career as foreign minister and prime minister from 1830
through his death in 1865.
Palmerston is generally remembered for his creation of the kingdom of Belgium
and his concept of British power and the international rights of its citizens, civis
Britannicus sum. One of Palmerston's first difficulties, upon his appointment as foreign
minister in 1830, was the Belgian problem. From the start Palmerston stood for the
position that the primary tenet of British foreign policy was to prevent a resurgent
France, either as its ally or opponent. It was from this position that he backed the
creation of the state of Belgium from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1831.
A neutral Belgium, protected by England and/or the Quadruple Alliance, would remove
the temptation from France to incorporate these French speakers into France as it had
done in 1795. It was also from this foreign policy prospective that in 1839 he was able
minister who performed the marriage. Victoria was supposedly buried with mementos of both her
husband, Albert, and Mr. Brown.
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