Word: palmerstonism
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...When she was born," said Winston Churchill, "Napoleon III ruled France, and Palmerston had only recently ceased to be Prime Minister of this country . . . Yet she lived into this atomic age, through two fearful wars which cast almost all the thrones of Europe to the ground . . . but also transformed the world...
Getting In. China's Manchu dynasty began to fear the influence of the foreigners on the shaky empire. Citing the importation of opium as their reason, the Manchus began obstructing trade. Tough Merchant Jardine persuaded Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston to send in the British navy. The Manchus fought back, and the result was the 1839 Opium War, which the British won. They made a treaty by which five Chinese ports (Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai) were thrown open to world trade...
Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865), great practitioner of cruiser diplomacy, bulldozed British prestige to its highest level since Waterloo. Three times in office (for a total of 16 years), he was disliked by underlings, whom he bullied, but was popular with the public, to whom he was "Old Pam." Under Old Pam a belligerent Britain invaded the Crimea to keep the Russians out of Turkey, annexed Hong Kong, elbowed the French away from Egypt. He disliked everything un-British; the Americans were "swaggering bullies...
...hope that intelligent people would appreciate the irony." This explanation suggests, in Author Pearson, a lack of appreciation both of the elements of irony and the demands of politics. Dizzy had no such lack. When a Tory snooper collected evidence of an illicit love affair involving Whig Lord Palmerston, and wanted to expose it at the next election, Dizzy sensibly demurred. "Palmerston is now 70," he said. "If he could provide evidence of his potency . . . he'd sweep the country...
...British authorities in Hong Kong had seized an oil tanker whose ownership was in dispute between Red China and the Nationalists. In retaliation, Peking confiscated the property of the British Shell Company of China (which has installations in Shanghai, Canton, Tientsin, Amoy & Hankow). In London, a Tory bigwig huffed: "Palmerston would have sent a gunboat at once." But a Labor policymaker tut-tutted: "We must not be the ones to set the east aflame-or to turn that heat against the west. Patience, unending patience...