Canning was the dominant figure in the cabinet and directed the Battle of Copenhagen, the seizure of the Danish fleet in 1807 to assure Britain's naval supremacy over Napoleon.

Canning served under the new prime minister the Earl of Liverpool as British Ambassador to Portugal (1814–1816), President of the Board of Control (1816–1821) and foreign secretary and Leader of the House of Commons (1822–1827).

The historian G. M. Trevelyan wrote For five years England had been guided by the genius of Canning, and seldom have so much brilliancy and so much wisdom combined to produce such happy results.

[1]When Lord Liverpool resigned in April 1827, Canning was chosen to succeed him as prime minister, ahead of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.

[2] His father, George Canning[3] of Garvagh, County Londonderry, in Ulster, the northern province in Ireland, was a gentleman of limited means, a failed wine merchant and lawyer, who renounced his right to inherit the family estate in exchange for payment of his substantial debts.

At the end of 1798 Canning responded to a resolution by George Tierney MP for peace negotiations with France: I for my part still conceive it to be the paramount duty of a British member of parliament to consider what is good for Great Britain ...

As little do I envy the feelings of that man, who can view the peoples of the Netherlands driven into insurrection, and struggling for their freedom against the heavy hand of a merciless tyranny, without entertaining any suspicion of what may be the sense of the word deliverance.

[12] A young Whig, William Lamb (the future Lord Melbourne, Prime Minister) wrote an 'Epistle to the Editors of the Anti-Jacobin', which attacked Canning: Who e'er ye are, all hail!

[18] He wrote on 22 November: "I would risk my life to be assured of being able to act always with P in a manner satisfactory to my own feelings and sense of what is right, rather than have to seek that object in separation from him.

Canning instead wanted it to have a military post and that it should be settled with ex-soldiers, free blacks and creoles, with the Native American population protected and helped.

[20] At a dinner to celebrate Pitt's birthday in 1802, Canning wrote the song "The Pilot that Weathered the Storm", performed by a tenor from Drury Lane, Charles Dignum: And oh!

if again the rude whirlwind should rise, The dawnings of peace should fresh darkness deform, The regrets of the good and the fears of the wise Shall turn to the Pilot that weathered the Storm.

One observer thought that Canning made incomparably the best speech and that his defence of Pitt's administration "one of the best things, either argumentatively as to matter, or critically and to manner and style" that he could ever remember.

Canning replied by criticising the Addington government's foreign policy and claimed that the House should recognise the greatness of the country and Pitt, who ought to be its leader.

[28] After reading this letter Pitt summoned Canning to London for a meeting, where he told him that if he resigned it would open a permanent breach between the two of them as it would cast a slur on his conduct.

Canning instructed Jackson that his overriding aim was to secure the possession of the Danish navy by offering the Danes a treaty of alliance and mutual defence whereby they would be given back their fleet at the end of the war.

[32] The day after he wrote that he had received a letter the previous night which provided an "account of the French being actually about to do that act of hostility, the possibility of which formed the groundwork of my Baltic plan.

[32] Napoleon had on 31 July instructed his foreign minister, Talleyrand, to inform the Danes that if they did not wish for Holstein to be invaded and occupied by Jean Bernadotte they must prepare for war against Britain.

On 25 August he wrote to Granville Leveson-Gower: "The suspense is, as you may well imagine, agitating and painful in the extreme; but I have an undiminished confidence as to the result, either by force or by treaty.

[35] After the news of Russia's declaration of war against Britain reached London on 2 December, Canning wrote to Lord Boringdon two days later: "The Peace of Tilsit you see is come out.

[36] On 3 February 1808, the opposition leader George Ponsonby requested the publication of all information on the strength and battle-worthiness of the Danish fleet sent by the British envoy at Copenhagen.

Castlereagh remained in the post until his suicide in 1822, overseeing British participation in the final years of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna which redrew the map of Europe.

After the war, Raffles' extra-legal establishment of a trading post in Singapore, a vassal of the Dutch-backed Johor Sultanate, formed the flashpoint for the 1824 renegotiation.

[48] This treaty's impact has lasted until the present day, with the established borders essentially being those between the modern nation-states of Malaysia and Indonesia;[49] Singapore also was ruled directly by the EIC from that point on, with the former arrangement of equal control between Sultan Hussein Shah, Temenggong Abdul Rahman and Resident of Singapore William Farquhar declared null and void in its aftermath.

[51] He helped guarantee the independence of Brazil and the Spanish colonies, thereby acting in support of the Monroe Doctrine and aiding British merchants to open new markets across South and Central America.

"[55] By granting recognition to Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil he brought these new states into the European system of trade and diplomacy, while blocking further colonization.

Canning, as Liverpool's right-hand man, was chosen by George IV to succeed him, in preference to the Duke of Wellington or Sir Robert Peel.

Consequently Canning found it difficult to form a government, and chose to invite a number of Whigs to join his Cabinet, including Lord Lansdowne.

However, Canning's health by this time was in steep decline: at the funeral of Frederick, Duke of York, which was held during a January night at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he became so ill that it was thought he might not recover.

Canning realized it was not enough for Britain to boycott conferences and congresses; it was essential to persuade the Powers that their interests could not be advanced by a system of intervention based upon principles of legitimacy, anti-nationalism and hostility to revolution.