134. Jingo

Here’s the episode where we learn where the word Jingoism was born.

After talking last time about the remarkable achievements on the domestic front of the second Disraeli government with its social reform, this week we start to look at what interested him far more: foreign affairs. And the biggest affair of them all was the ‘Eastern Question’, precipitated by yet another war between Russia and Turkey. That in turn followed on from the massacres carried out by Turkish forces in the Balkans, specifically what came to be known as the ‘Bulgarian atrocities’.

Gladstone re-emerged from semi-retirement to denounce those horrors. Disraeli, on the other hand, was far more worried about the behaviour of the Russians and intent on blocking their expansion. As time went on, public opinion seemed to swing increasingly in his direction. “We don't want to fight,” claimed the music hall song, “but by Jingo if we do, we've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too.”

In deciding how to confront the Russian threat, Disraeli found himself working increasingly closely with a man with whom he’d previously fallen out badly, Lord Salisbury. And, we’ll see, their collaboration worked.

 

Illustration: HMS Alexandra, flagship of the British Mediterranean fleet in the 1870s, and one of the ironclads that forced the Dardanelles. Public domain.
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.