“Our own Correspondent from Greece”; Covering Diplomatic War and Conflict in Early-Victorian Britain (1835–1857)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34624/fb.v0i19.34699Keywords:
Britain, Greece, Victorian newspapers, conflict, war, blockade of 1850, Crimean WarAbstract
In the years 1835–1857 the British diplomatic mission in Athens did not confine its activity to carrying out British policy but built up a straightforward and carefully cultivated relationship with the English press. Several episodes revealed its intention of using the papers as a vehicle in order to vindicate the conduct and the opinions of its personnel on Greek politics. This article argues that in early-Victorian Britain statesmen were fully conscious of the implication of supervising the information on foreign affairs that reached the public and of exerting diplomatic pressure on other states through the daily press. As international developments gradually made interesting reading, the scarcity of communication from a faraway country such as Greece lent authority to the reports published in the London papers, which were heavily “influenced” by British international considerations. In this context the columns of a daily newspaper and the brevity of journalistic contributions enabled members of the British Legation in Athens to present their severe censor of successive Greek governments to a wider section of the British political body.
Downloads
References
Anonymous (1847-1848). The Political Condition and Prospects of Greece. The Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1, 68-74.
Brouzas, C. C. (1949). Byron’s Maid of Athens: Her Family and Surroundings. West Virginia University Bulletin-Philological Papers, 12-VI, 48–50.
Brown, D. (2012). Palmerston. A biography. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2014.937166
Brown, D. (2002). Palmerston and the politics of foreign policy 1846–55. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592290701333561
Brown, L. (1977). The Treatment of the News in Mid-Victorian Newspapers. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 27, 23–39.
Busse, V., & Busse, M. (Eds.). (2014). Diary of Wilhelmine von Plüskow. Grand Lady-in-Waiting of Queen Amalia. Marathon.
Busse, V., & Busse, M. (Eds.). (2011). Unpublished Letters of Queen Amalia to her Father, 1836-1853. Estia.
Canning, Stratford (1850, March 7). [Letter to Sir Thomas Wyse]. Public Record Office, (Canning Papers, FO352/33A/1, folder 8), Kew Gardens.
Dakin, D. (1973). The Greek Struggle for Independence, 1821–1833. Batsford.
Dracatos Papanicolas, Georgios (1850). On the Speech of Her Majesty’s Foreign Secretary. A Letter to the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston in Reference to the Greek Question. London.
Figes, O. (2012). The Crimean War. A History. Picador.
Griffiths (1850, July 9). [Letter to Sir Thomas Wyse]. Public Record Office (FO, folio 219, 32/1820, Kew Gardens.
Hionidis, P. (2002). The Greek kingdom in British public debate, 1862-1881 [Doctoral dissertation, University of London]. British Library, EThOS.
https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.399528
Jones, A. (2016). Powers of the press: Newspapers, power and the public in nineteenth-century England (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315246246
Kofas, J. V. (1980). International and Domestic Politics in Greece during the Crimean War. Columbia University Press.
Koss, Stephen (1981). The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Vol 1: Nineteenth Century. Hamish Hamilton.
Lyons Papers, West Sussex Record Office, Chichester.
Lyons, Sir Edmund (1839, May 15). [Dispatch to Lord Palmerston]. Public Record Office, (FO32/87, folios 221–230). Kew Gardens.
Mac Lean, D. (1981). The Greek Revolution and the Anglo-French Entente 1843–44. English Historical Review, 96(378), 117–129. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XCVI.CCCLXXVIII.117
Miliori, M. (1998). The Greek nation in British eyes 1821–1864: Aspects of a British discourse on nationality, politics, history and Europe [Doctoral dissertation, Oxford University]. British Library, EThOS. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.264836
Palmerston, H. J. Temple (1832). Speech in the House of Commons. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates (3rd series), col. 1163.
Parry, Jonathan (2002). The Politics of Patriotism. English Liberalism, national identity and Europe, 1830-1886. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511495984
Petropulos, J. A. (1968). Politics and statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, 1833–1843. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400876020
Philhellene (1848). British Diplomacy in Greece. London.
Southgate, D. (1966). “The Most English Minister…” The policies and politics of Palmerston. Macmillan.
Skopetea, E. (1988). To “protypon vasileion” ke he Megale Idea. Opseis tou Ethnikou provlematos tes Ellados (1830–1880) [The “Model Kingdom” and the Great Idea. Aspects of the National Problem in Greece]. Polytypon (Greece).
Steele, E. D. (1991). Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855–1865. Cambridge University Press.
The History of the Times. Volume II: The Tradition Established 1841–1884 (1939). Office of the Times.
The Morning Chronicle
The Morning Herald
The Morning Post
The Times.
Wyse, Sir Thomas (1850, March 2). [Letter to Stratford Canning]. Public Record Office (Canning Papers, FO352/33A/1, folder 7), Kew Gardens, UK.
