Self-Preservation at Copenhagen

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 141-145

141

Chapter 18

Self-Preservation at

Copenhagen

Was it to be contended; that in a moment of imminent danger and

impending necessity, we should have abained from that course which

prudence and policy diated, . . . because . . . we should have the

consolation of having the authority of Puf‌fendorf to plead?

— lord CanninG (3 feBruary 1808)1

V’   prescient, as states in the nineteenth

century began deploying a sweeping concept of defensive

“self-preservation” to justify violence, one that went beyond

the narrower concepts of self-defence employed by the great jurists.

The most notable of these conf‌licts, raising exactly the dilemmas

Vattel feared, occurred at Copenhagen in 1807. In a twist of fate, this

was a campaign in which a young Andrew Drew saw action and which

would also later be invoked during the Caroline dispute.

 1807,  was at war with Napoleon’s France. Denmark was

neutral in that conf‌lict, but possessed a signif‌icant navy that the Brit-

ish worried would be impressed into service by Napoleon, under the

terms of a secret treaty. The British government dispatched a for-

midable f‌leet to negotiate the temporary surrender of the Danish

ships to Britain, until the war’s end. Upon arriving at unsuspecting

Copenhagen in August, the British commanders announced the jus-

tice of their intent and the might of their force, and proclaimed: “We

come, therefore, to your shores, inhabitants of Zealand, not as ene-

mies, but in self-defence, to prevent those who have so long disturbed