Background
He was born George Hamilton-Gordon, on Jan. 28, 1784, at Edinburgh, the son of George, Lord Haddo, and grandson of the third earl. Orphaned at an early age he was brought up by his guardians, William Pitt the Younger and Lord Melville.
prime minister Foreign Secretary
He was born George Hamilton-Gordon, on Jan. 28, 1784, at Edinburgh, the son of George, Lord Haddo, and grandson of the third earl. Orphaned at an early age he was brought up by his guardians, William Pitt the Younger and Lord Melville.
Aberdeen attended Harrow and Cambridge.
He traveled abroad after the Peace of Amiens of 1802. He succeeded to the title in 1801, was elected a Scottish representative peer in 1806, and created a peer of the United Kingdom in 1814.
In 1813, Aberdeen accepted a special mission to Austria to secure Austrian cooperation in the war against Napoleon. He negotiated and signed a treaty of alliance at TöplitzToplitz and participated in the peace negotiations that followed the four-day battle of Leipzig (Battle of the Nations, October 1813). After the capitulation of Napoleon in 1814, he participated in the peace settlement at Paris.
Aberdeen devoted the next 14 years to routine duties in the House of Lords, where he was a Tory, and to the development of his Scottish estates. He refused a seat in George Canning's cabinet, but served as foreign secretary under the Duke of Wellington from 1828 to 1830. In 1829, a year before the end of the War of Greek Independence (from Turkey), Aberdeen successfully pressed the cabinet to recognize Greek independence. After the 1830 July Revolution in France he also prevailed upon a reluctant Wellington to recognize King Louis Philippe.
Aberdeen was out of office for most of the 1830's. In 1841 he resumed the post of foreign secretary in Peel's second ministry and followed a policy of entente (understanding) with France, avoiding the danger of war in a dispute over Tahiti. Under Aberdeen's direction, also, the outstanding boundary differences with the United States were finally terminated by the Webster-Ashburton and Oregon Treaties (1842 and 1846). He supported the repeal of the Corn Laws solely out of loyalty to Peel and remained closely associated with Peel after the fall of his government in 1846. Afterwards he strongly opposed Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston's bellicose foreign policy during Lord John Russell's government but would not join the protectionist Tories.
After Peel's death in 1850 Aberdeen became recognized as leader of the Peelites, a separate group of liberal Conservatives. Following the defeats of a Liberal government under Russell and of a protectionist government under Lord Derby in 1852, he became prime minister of a coalition of Peelites and Liberals. Differences between him and the more bellicose Palmerston and Russell produced a policy of drift which led to British participation in the Crimean War (1854-1856). Parliamentary criticism of the administration of the war brought about the downfall of his government in 1855 and the virtual retirement of Aberdeen from active politics. He died in London on Dec. 21, 1860.
Although not a great foreign secretary or prime minister, Lord Aberdeen was a man of considerable learning and integrity, respected by his contemporaries. His domestic life was full of tragedies: he lost both parents in early childhood, his first wife in 1818, his second wife in 1833, and three daughters before they had come of age. He was survived by his heir, Lord Haddo, and three younger sons.
Leader of the Peelites (liberal Conservatives).