Alfonso Goizueta Alfaro is a PhD Student and Leverhulme Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Grand Strategy. His research focusses on Britain’s re-ordering of the Spanish Atlantic world after 1815 in competition with the United States. Previously, Alfonso obtained his BA (Hons) in History and International Relations from the History and the War Studies departments at King’s College London, winning the History and International Relations Prize for achieving the highest cumulative score in the programme. Concurrently with his PhD, he runs a podcast (La Torre del Faro) in which he talks about international affairs and Spanish politics.

 

Publications:

• ‘Forging Liberal States: Palmerston’s foreign policy and the rise of a constitutional monarchy in Spain, 1833-7’ in Historical Research, vol. 94, no. 266 (November 2021), pp. 828–848.
• Los últimos gobernantes de Castilla: Isabel la Católica, Cisneros e Isabel de Portugal (Madrid: Clarín, 2018).
• Limitando el Poder, 1871-1939: Historia de la Diplomacia Occidental (Madrid: Clarín, 2017).

 

Thesis Project

Britain and the Cuban Question: Interrogating visions of order and disorder in the Spanish Atlantic world, 1815-1867.

This thesis explores Britain's ordering of the former Spanish Atlantic to ensure its influence and interests in the region amidst a changing international environment and in competition with its main rival, the United States. Through an analysis of British policy towards Cuba and the strategically vital question of the abolition of the slave trade, the thesis presents an original study of the evolution of British ordering in the Atlantic world from 1815 to 1867, considering how did Britain handle the decline of the Spanish world, pursue its world order ideas in an increasingly competitive world, what model of order did it seek to impose and which one did it finally manage to impose. It will show how did the statesmen of the 'age of Palmerston' thought about international disorder and world order, how did they envision it affected British interests and how did they set to tackle it. This thesis will provide a new analytical framework (ordering) for the study of British foreign policy in the early nineteenth century. This will bring into one story a compendium of issues which historians have treated as separate but which were intimately linked to the pursuit of changing the structure of the international system – such as geopolitics, trade, morality – to further British national interests. By exploring the origins and composition of British world order, thus thesis will give a new interpretation of the intricacies and contradictions of British foreign policy in the age of Palmerston, and will revisit the emergence of British world power, the plan behind it and the reasons for its downfall.

 

Supervisors:

• Dr Maeve Ryan
• Professor Andrew Lambert