Word: palmerston
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...barren island with hardly a house upon it." Such was British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston's contemptuous description of Hong Kong before it was ceded to the British by a weak Chinese regime at the close of the Opium War in 1842. As a fruit of war, it was not considered a peach. But over the past 137 years, the once blighted island has developed into a bustling seaport colony that boasts a thriving economy. Though Britain's lease on 90% of the 400-sq.-mi. area expires in only 18 years, residents expect a glowing future...
...thus the lifeline of the industrialized world. So far, the Western powers have succeeded in thwarting the Russians. In the 19th century the British Empire, from such places as Ottoman Turkey, Persia and the frontiers of India, intrigued and battled against Russian expansion. Britain's Prime Minister Lord Palmerston seemed to delight in all the machinations; to him, in a phrase first attributed to Rudyard Kipling, it was "the great game." In the 20th century the game has continued, with somewhat different rules and different players. The Soviets have replaced the czars, and the U.S. has supplanted Britain...
Victoria's impulsive reach for a gunboat was as quick as Lord Palmerston's whenever the empire's prerogatives were challenged. Although Albert tried to assert the principle that the crown should be above politics, she remained, as one expects queens to be, a natural Tory. Thus she ignored the Chartist riots of 1839, largely because no minister could persuade her that the rabble mattered. Albert and Victoria concurred on one political principle, that a sovereign's duty was to save "her" people from the blunders of their elect ed representatives. By custom, the Queen ruled...
...moment of difficulty or danger, a man's British citizenship could easily be his most valuable possession. In 1849, when Don Pacifico, a Jewish merchant of Malta, was refused compensation by the Greek government for injuries he had suffered at the hands of some of its citizens, Lord Palmerston, Britain's Prime Minister, sent the British navy to blockade Piraeus. British subjects the world over, Palmerston told the House of Commons at the time, could boast as proudly of their citizenship as St. Paul did when he said: "Civis Romanus...