Spheres of influence have made a dramatic comeback during the second Trump era. Dreams of maintaining the rules-based order are shattered. There is no going back, and the only question is how this chaotic period will reset global affairs. The United States is trying to assert its dominance over the Americas in a revival of the Monroe Doctrine. China clearly wants to supplant the United States as the pre-eminent power in the Indo-Pacific and enhance its global economic reach. Russia is waging war in Ukraine to restore its Soviet-era near abroad. It is the long-predicted return of 19th-century multipolarity. This does not mean that the interests of small nations no longer matter. In truth, they could not be more important.

This has been the vital insight of British foreign policy at its very best. Great powers rise and fall. Alliances and rivalries shift and change. In this carousel of geopolitical struggle there are the small nations and medium-ranking powers who can lend tactical and strategic advantages to the great powers. Britain has always seen its role, especially during the 19th century, as an advocate for the interests of small nations, which can provide a balancing force against the larger powers of the day. George Canning, the British Foreign Secretary in 1807 to 1809 and 1822 to 1827, was one of the greatest practitioners of this approach. His genius was to demonstrate how the principled defence of smaller countries could serve grand strategy.

Developing this impulse could not have happened without Canning’s ministerial experience during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It was an epochal period that cast a lengthy shadow, right up to the First World War. A powerful France summoned all its strength to try to isolate and weaken Britain. Although the Battle of Trafalgar secured British naval dominance, it was hard diplomatic work assembling and reassembling the coalitions of different European states – large and small – that tried to end Napoleon’s rule at various points. Denmark and Portugal were key players during this period alongside Russia, Prussia and Austria. While by no means great powers, they could still provide crucial strategic benefits.

This attachment to the defence of small nations, though rooted in realpolitik, might strike some observers as being evidence of Canning’s liberalism. But it can be argued convincingly that it was actually a product of his conservatism. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were a transformative experience for Canning, shifting his loyalties from the Whigs under Fox to Pitt’s nascent Tories as well as changing his views of politics. The constant is his admiration for the philosophy of Edmund Burke, ‘the manual of my political philosophy’, as he put it. Burke had spent years of his life fighting for the weak against the mighty, voicing sympathy for the American colonists, pushing for the emancipation of Irish Catholics, and doggedly pursuing Warren Hastings for the wrongdoings of the East India Company.

When France was overtaken by revolution, terror, and then dictatorship, it was the small nations of Europe who suffered the most. Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies swept away centuries of principalities, republics, dukedoms and kingdoms. The 1815 Vienna settlement, for all its virtues, was not strictly speaking a true restoration; it still produced a map of Europe that was much more consolidated than the fragmented continent that existed before 1789. It was Burke’s fear that the violence of the Bastille would spread across Europe like a flood and overwhelm smaller states, and he was proven right in his predictions. Against this backdrop, Canning developed his view of small nations and their importance to the balance of power in Europe, but also his respect for their organic nature in contrast to the centralising autocracies, whether it be Napoleonic France, Tsarist Russia or Habsburg Austria.

Although this resulted in the noble aim of liberating Europe from Napoleonic domination, it did not prevent Canning from using practical and brutal methods to accomplish his goal. In the most controversial episode of his first tenure as foreign secretary, Canning ordered the bombardment of Copenhagen and the seizure of Zealand when the prince regent of Denmark refused to hand over his country’s navy to Britain or join an alliance. This was echoed later in history by Winston Churchill’s decision to sink the French navy when its admirals refused to scuttle their ships and escape Nazi control. It was a ruthless and effective power move, securing the North Sea and the Baltic for Britain and her allies. It allowed British troops to protect Sweden and coax Russia away from Napoleon’s ‘continental system’. George III was very critical of this action, but Canning’s justification speaks volumes. He reasoned ‘We are hated throughout Europe and that hate must be cured by fear.’

An alliance was also formed with Portugal under which its regent would become emperor of Brazil and leave his home country. A British naval blockade of the country’s ports against France put to bed any last doubts the regent had about signing the agreement, and the Portuguese navy would not fall into French hands either. It was the resistance of the Iberian peninsula against Napoleonic France that helped energise British public opinion, backing Portugal, the country’s oldest ally, and the bravery of the Spanish rebels. Although the Convention of Cintra was ultimately a disappointment after an otherwise successful military campaign by the future Duke of Wellington, it still signified the importance of public sentiment over how Britain interacted with less powerful countries. It was Canning’s enduring and correct belief that the Peninsular War was the key to British efforts to rollback Napoleon’s empire both in terms of military strategy and managing public opinion.

However, governmental and military dysfunction as well as his own personal flaws brought Canning’s first stint at the Foreign Office to a close. In a misjudged move, he forced Lord Castlereagh out of the ministry and tried to assume the premiership for himself after Lord Portland’s health failed. This set in motion a series of events culminating in a duel with Castlereagh and Canning’s exile from government for more than a decade. He would remain out of the public eye and excluded from the concluding events of the Napoleonic Wars while he looked after the British embassy in Lisbon to await the regent of Portugal. It was one of the great missed opportunities of Cannings’s career.

In 1816 he returned to Cabinet as head of the Board of Trade with some influence over foreign policy, beginning his political rehabilitation. Canning was against the grand Congress meetings between the great powers. Although his thinking was closely aligned with Castlereagh’s 1820 state paper, which indicated a shift towards a new foreign policy posture, Canning favoured an altogether different style of diplomacy. But he remained thwarted and, in an act of desperation, sought the governor-generalship of India to at least restore his personal finances. When Castlereagh committed suicide in 1822, Canning was able to return as foreign secretary and become leader of the House of Commons.

His second period at the Foreign Office is still regarded as one of the high points of British diplomacy. There was no longer a war to fight but a peace to conserve. To do this, Canning used a mix of traditional and modern methods. His decision to move Britain away from the Congress System was a return to the more unilateral approach of 18th-century foreign policy towards keeping the balance of power. What makes Canning so distinctive from his 18th-century forbearers was his exploitation of public opinion to justify his foreign policy goals. It was the use of liberal means to justify conservative ends that powered Canning’s popularity with the public as well as hostility towards him from within government.

Although the British move away from the Congress System had begun under Castlereagh, it was only natural that Canning should take it forward with gusto, calling for a new era of diplomacy no longer defined by ‘cabal and intrigue’. In a very simple but powerful statement of his outlook, Canning declared: ‘Each nation for itself and God for us all.’ This was rooted in Canning’s belief in the power of public opinion to justify and shape foreign policy. But by rejecting the notion that diplomacy should be strictly controlled by the great powers, Canning was opening the way for smaller nations to support the balance of power and provide a counterweight to larger states. This would support British interests and prevent the Continent being dominated by a single ruling power or by authoritarian ideology.

An early defining moment for Canning was his response to the civil war in Spain. At the Congress of Verona in 1822, Canning spoke out against intervention in Spain from the ‘Holy Alliance’. But France, with the support of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, invaded in April 1823 to restore the absolutist monarch Ferdinand VII. Britain could not stop the invasion, and Canning had to manage the British public’s response to events. He delivered a speech at Plymouth where he outlined his foreign policy. Canning’s position of condemning France’s actions, supporting the Spanish liberals, but remaining neutral was popular with the British public. Canning called himself ‘an enthusiast for national independence’, signalling how his foreign policy was in line with the convictions of the British people.

Although the French invasion successfully restored Ferdinand VII to the throne, the war in Spain led to one of Canning’s great foreign policy successes: the spectacular and controversial move to recognise the newly independent republics of South America. The king, Wellington, and other High Tory members of the cabinet were staunchly against it, fearing the consequences for European stability. Canning’s popular and nationalist appeal was innovative and seen as dangerous by the old guard. France and the ‘Holy Alliance’ wanted the republics brought back under Spanish control, but on this matter, Britain’s naval advantage in the Atlantic made European intervention in South America incredibly difficult. Lord Liverpool stood by Canning and so Britain recognised Buenos Aires in 1824 and then Colombia and Mexico the following year.

Canning’s approach was replicated with similar success in Portuguese affairs. Indeed, Portugal had long been a crucial small state for Canningite foreign policy dating back to his first period in the Foreign Office. After the Prince Regent finally returned to Lisbon in 1821, he supported a liberal constitutionalist regime that was ultimately deposed in 1823. To secure Brazil’s independence under Emperor Pedro I, Pedro IV of Portugal, Canning intervened to support a pro-British and liberal government. In 1826 Canning authorised the Royal Navy to repel a Spanish invasion to preserve Portugal’s self-governance and the new liberal regime under Pedro I’s daughter, Maria II. Portugal would still endure years of political instability, but its self-governance and the independence of Brazil had been secured through Canning’s efforts.

Canning’s focus on small states did not always lead to unmitigated foreign policy triumphs. Greece stands out as a notable long-term problem, which he failed to resolve. The country had first rebelled against the Ottomans in 1821, and Canning maintained a policy of British neutrality in the conflict while keeping Russia on side. A conference in St Petersburg led to the Treaty of London in 1827, under which Britain, Russia, and France agreed to intervene in the Greek War of Independence to gain some autonomy for Greece. By this point, Canning was prime minister for a brief time before his premature death in August 1827. Subsequently, the Turkish fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Navarino, and Greece was recognised as an independent state in 1830, though the Eastern Question would remain a running sore in European affairs for decades.

Canning’s foreign policy record would inspire British statesmen for the rest of the 19th century, and its shadow extends well into the 20th and even the 21st. He clearly sold his foreign policy vision to the British public through his speeches in Parliament and outside of it, too. His diplomatic dispatches were written in clear English and powerfully charged, even if it was not always diplomatic in tone. Metternich condemned Canning as ‘a revolution in himself alone’. It was a new approach to diplomacy, with old goals in mind, and there is still much that can be gained from the study of Canning’s achievements, methods, and failures.

For the remainder of the 19th century, the British public’s sympathy for smaller countries and liberal regimes in Europe served the broader goal of containing the authoritarian land empires. Naval power was the tool, and potent symbol, of the hard power needed to support this approach. Portugal, Spain, Greece, Belgium, the Italian patriots, all benefitted from British support. Palmerston was the statesman who most ably revived the Canningite impulse and benefitted politically from it. William Gladstone, another admirer of Canning, pursued a more humanitarian interpretation of this impulse, and stormed back to power by mobilising public opinion against the ‘Bulgarian Horrors’ in 1876.

The Canningite impulse ultimately helped trigger British resistance to the German Kaiser over the violation of Belgian neutrality, which Britain had agreed to defend under a treaty signed by Palmerston. Even as the British Empire began its decline and fall, the Canningite impulse persisted. It was the mounting failures to save small nations, such as Abyssinia, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland that broke the back of appeasement. Winston Churchill, another great practitioner of Canningite foreign policy, rallied the British public to the defence of European freedom in the face of Hitler’s war machine.

Postwar history has also been shaped by this impulse. European integration was initially understood by most Conservatives as a means for small nations to pool their resources and sovereignty to pursue common interests rather than a basis for a federal Europe. Tony Blair’s interventionism was popular when it meant helping small polities like Kosovo. In the history of British foreign policy, it is when the country is perceived to be on the side of the aggressor or failing to stand up to them where governments run into trouble. Blair’s reputation will never be free of the blame for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Anthony Eden was brought low by his government’s conduct over Suez. Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, despite their many virtues and accomplishments, will always be defined by the tragedy of appeasement.

When Britain must intervene, it has to be justified to the British public to maintain consent, otherwise the government of the day can pay a heavy political price. This is an insight that Canning understood in his bones and made him one of the country’s greatest foreign secretaries. This Canningite impulse to protect small, independent, and liberal countries from foreign aggressors remains strong today despite the changing global order. British support has naturally gravitated towards defending Ukraine and the Baltic States against Russia, and South Korea and Taiwan against China. It even extends to supporting Canada against the annexation threats of Trump.

British influence in the world has waxed and waned with the rise and fall of its empire. The composition of its political elites has changed radically alongside its changing geopolitical fortunes. But there are continuities in British foreign policy that have endured and are sustained by a powerful heritage. When Canning was weaving together his foreign policy in the 1820s, he was also appealing to the public’s conception of what their country’s self-interest and national character should be. He believed in Britain as an independent, maritime power on the side of the continent’s small states and defending liberal constitutionalism. It harked back to the glory days of William Pitt, the Elder and his patriotic brand of whiggery, echoing down future generations through Palmerston and Churchill. It is a legacy worth conserving.