Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd marquess of Salisbury

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd marquess of Salisbury (born Feb. 3, 1830, Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Eng.—died Aug. 22, 1903, Hatfield) was a Conservative political leader who was a three-time prime minister (1885–86, 1886–92, 1895–1902) and four-time foreign secretary (1878, 1885–86, 1886–92, 1895–1900), who presided over a wide expansion of Great Britain’s colonial empire.

Robert Cecil was the second surviving son of the 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, who had married Frances Gascoyne, an heiress to large landed estates. Cecil’s elder brother suffered from a debilitating illness all his life and died in 1865; thus Lord Robert Cecil became heir to the estates, and, on the death of his father in 1868, he became the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. His family background allowed him easy entry into any profession, but only merit and ability could ensure high office.

Robert Cecil’s childhood was unhappy and lonely. He was exceptionally clever but not especially strong, and he hated games. His father was conscientious but lacking in warmth. His mother, by all accounts sociable and vivacious, died when he was only 10. He was sent to Eton, where he was perpetually bullied. He was by nature pessimistic, withdrawn, and shy, but his courtesy, modesty, and fair-minded tolerance combined to make an attractive personality. Taken from school when he was 15, he was tutored privately. His love for scholarship was deep. At 18 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, but his stay was cut short by a breakdown in health. On the advice of his doctors, he set out on a long sea voyage to Australia and New Zealand. He was absent from England for almost two years. During this time his character matured. He regained his health and acquired self-confidence. He was still uncertain as to his future career; both the church and politics attracted him. When he was offered a seat in Parliament for Stamford in 1853, he chose politics and was elected to the House of Commons.

He fell in love with Georgina Alderson, but his father objected to the marriage, regarding her lack of social standing and wealth as an impediment to an alliance with the Cecil family. Nonetheless, the marriage took place in 1857. They had five sons and two surviving daughters. Salisbury was a man of strong religious faith and enjoyed a happy home life. Lady Salisbury was intelligent and sociable, and all the Cecils came to regard Hatfield as their home. Hatfield also became one of the great houses in which distinguished visitors were entertained.

During the years from 1853 to 1874, Salisbury was only briefly a government minister (secretary of state for India, July 1866 to March 1867) but resigned office in disagreement over the Conservative government’s espousal of parliamentary reform. He became deeply suspicious of the new Conservative leader, Benjamin Disraeli. Out of the government he was active as a member of the House of Commons and as a writer; he frequently contributed political articles to the Saturday Review and The Quarterly Review. He also interested himself in science, especially in botany and in electricity and magnetism; later he had his own laboratory built at Hatfield.

In February 1874 Salisbury was persuaded to join Disraeli’s ministry and once more became secretary of state for India. During their seven years together in and out of office, Salisbury, overcoming his earlier prejudice, came to regard Disraeli with admiration and affection.

Succeeding the inept Lord Derby as foreign secretary, Salisbury first became responsible for Britain’s foreign relations in April 1878, at a time of great crisis in the Balkans. It seemed probable that war would break out between Britain and Russia over the control of Constantinople. By masterly diplomacy Salisbury ensured that the Russians came to the conference table at the Congress of Berlin (June–July 1878). Disraeli occupied the limelight, but Salisbury’s careful and patient diplomacy secured the essential compromises. For their success Disraeli and Salisbury were granted the Order of the Garter, the highest decoration Queen Victoria could bestow.

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After Disraeli’s death (1881), Salisbury led the Conservative opposition in the House of Lords. He became prime minister during the brief Conservative administration from June 1885 to January 1886. Ireland and imperial problems were then the chief issues. Salisbury opposed Gladstone on the question of Home Rule for Ireland and three times won the electoral support necessary to become prime minister (1886–92, 1895–1900, and 1900–02). During the greater part of these years, Salisbury combined the offices of prime minister and foreign secretary. He was not autocratic but left wide discretion to individual ministers. Weak control by the government as a whole sometimes had harmful results. This was one of the causes of the South African War (1899–1902), which occurred when Joseph Chamberlain was colonial secretary. But at the Foreign Office, Salisbury succeeded in avoiding serious conflict with the great European powers despite major crises and rivalries.

The partition of Africa largely preoccupied Salisbury’s second ministry (1886–92) and remained a source of serious Anglo-French conflict until 1898, when France accepted British dominance on the Nile after the Fashoda Crisis. Salisbury was an imperialist: he believed a phase of European, preferably British, rule indispensable for the advancement of the “backward” races and had no hesitation in imposing this rule by force, as he did in the Sudan (1896–99). His foreign policy was directed toward the defense and enlargement of the British Empire. He had no sympathy for older empires, such as the Ottoman, whose rulers he regarded as corrupt oppressors. Salisbury attempted but failed to gain the cooperation of the European powers to intervene against Turkey to bring to a halt the Armenian massacres (1895–96). He refused to be frightened either by U.S. threats over Venezuela (1895) or by the Kaiser’s telegram (1896) to Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, congratulating him on repelling a raid from the British-controlled Cape Colony.

During the last decade of the 19th century, when the principal powers grouped into alliances, Salisbury maintained a free hand for Britain. He was opposed to alliance commitments, fearing that when the time came a democratic electorate might refuse to go to war; he also regarded alliances for Britain as unnecessary and dangerous. He did not back Chamberlain’s unsuccessful efforts to conclude an alliance with Germany (1898–1901).

History has reevaluated Salisbury’s contribution and acquitted him of the charge of “secret diplomacy”; nor was Salisbury an “isolationist,” since his diplomacy was active wherever Britain’s interests extended. During the last two years of his ministry, from the autumn of 1900 until the summer of 1902, old age and ill health forced him to give up the Foreign Office, though he continued as prime minister. With Lord Lansdowne as the new foreign secretary, he saw his principles of diplomacy partially abandoned when Britain concluded an alliance with Japan in January 1902. Later that year, in July, Salisbury retired.

Salisbury was the last aristocratic statesman to head a British government while in the House of Lords and not the elected Commons. He represented a tradition that passed away with him. His contemporaries recognized his greatness as a statesman. He combined a realism and clarity of view with a fundamentally ethical approach to diplomacy, which sought to conciliate and pacify while maintaining important national interests.