Global Encounters and the Archives: Britain’s Empire in the Age of Horace Walpole
Item
What May Be Doing Abroad; What Is Doing at Home, 1769
Title
What May Be Doing Abroad; What Is Doing at Home, 1769
Description
In this print, the author draws a stark contrast between the concerns of Britain's ministers and those of European monarchs. In the top frame, monarchs of France, Spain, Prussia, and Austria stand poised to dismember Britain's global empire in a "Treaty for the Partition of the Dominions of Great Britain." The bottom frame, by contrast, features British ministers so obsessed with their own domestic and imperial issues –from the Stamp Act repeal to Parliamentary legislation –that they remain unaware of the international plot. This contrast satirizes the nearsightedness of Britain's politicians, who faced a mounting imperial crisis abroad and ministerial instability at home in the wake of the Seven Years' War. It also captures the alienation by Britain of its key diplomatic partners, which would leave Britain without European allies in the American Revolution. Catalog Record
Contributor
Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library
Creator
Anonymous
