Wikipedia Deep Dive

Don Pacifico affair

12 min read

When Britain Sent a Fleet Over a Broken Window

In the spring of 1850, the Royal Navy blockaded every port in Greece. Warships seized the entire Greek fleet. For two months, nothing entered or left the country by sea.

The reason? A Jewish merchant's house had been ransacked by a mob three years earlier, and the Greek government refused to pay compensation.

This was gunboat diplomacy at its most brazen—and it would spark one of the great parliamentary debates of the nineteenth century, force the temporary withdrawal of the French ambassador from London, and give birth to a phrase that still echoes in discussions of citizenship and state power: Civis Romanus sum. I am a Roman citizen.

The Man Called Don Pacifico

David Pacifico was born in Gibraltar, which made him a British subject by birth. But his life had taken him far from that rocky peninsula at the mouth of the Mediterranean. He had served as Portuguese consul-general in Morocco, then in Athens, where he was eventually dismissed in 1842 for repeatedly exceeding his authority. Despite losing his diplomatic post, he stayed in Greece.

Pacifico was not a poor man living in obscurity. His house in Athens had previously been the residence of Count Josef Ludwig von Armansperg, who had served as the head of the Regency Council for the young King Otto and later as the king's chief secretary. This was a substantial property in the heart of the Greek capital.

He was also deeply involved with the local Jewish community, holding funds designated for building a synagogue in Athens.

The Riot That Started It All

The trouble began with an Easter tradition.

In Athens, Greek Orthodox Easter included a custom of burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847, the wealthy banker James Mayer de Rothschild happened to be visiting the city during Easter week to discuss a possible loan to the Greek government. City officials, worried about offending their distinguished Jewish visitor, banned the effigy-burning that year.

The Athenian populace didn't blame Rothschild for the cancellation. They blamed Pacifico.

Three days after Easter, a mob gathered outside his house. According to Pacifico's account, the crowd numbered three or four hundred people, and among them were soldiers from the gendarmerie who had just come from church. They battered down his door with large stones.

What followed was systematic destruction. Pacifico wrote to the British Minister in Athens that the mob beat his wife, his children, and his son-in-law. They smashed windows, doors, tables, and chairs. They stole jewels, gold and silver ornaments, and diamonds. They took nearly ten thousand drachmas in cash—some of it Pacifico's own money, but much of it funds he was holding for the Italian Jewish community, intended for a synagogue and charitable purposes.

Most significantly for what would follow, they destroyed the Portuguese consular archives that Pacifico had retained from his time as consul-general. These papers, he claimed, documented that the Portuguese government owed him over twenty-one thousand pounds sterling—a staggering sum, equivalent to millions in today's money.

The Claim That Wouldn't Die

Pacifico immediately appealed to British authorities for help. Sir Edmund Lyons, the British Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece, took up the case and forwarded it to London. There it landed on the desk of Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary.

Palmerston was an interesting choice to handle this matter. He had been a supporter of Greek independence during the war of 1821-1829, when Greece broke free from Ottoman rule. He was, in the terminology of the era, a philhellene—a lover of Greece. But he was also a fierce defender of British subjects abroad, and he saw in Pacifico's case an opportunity to assert British power.

He instructed Lyons to have Pacifico compile an itemized list of his losses and present it to the Greek government for payment.

The Greek government refused.

Their objections were not unreasonable. The claimed damages were enormous—some estimates suggested Pacifico was claiming more money than the Greek Royal Palace was worth. The Greeks also argued that this was a matter for their courts, not a diplomatic dispute between governments. If Pacifico had been robbed, he should sue the perpetrators under Greek law.

Months passed. Pacifico wrote again, noting that he had been forced to flee his house during the following Easter celebrations, fearing another attack. He pointed out that anti-Jewish violence in Greece was not isolated: two Jews had been killed in Patras, and a synagogue had been burned in Negroponte (the old name for the island of Euboea).

The correspondence continued through 1848 and into 1849. The Greek government remained unmoved.

Palmerston Loses Patience

In December 1849, Palmerston decided he had waited long enough. He wrote to Sir Thomas Wyse, who had replaced Lyons as British Minister in Athens, with instructions that read like a battle plan.

The Admiralty would order Admiral Sir William Parker to stop at Athens on his way back from the Dardanelles. Wyse was to continue diplomatic efforts, but only briefly—Palmerston measured the remaining time for negotiation "by days—perhaps by some very small number of hours."

If the Greeks didn't yield, Parker was to begin "reprisals." This meant seizing Greek property. Palmerston noted that taking merchant ships probably wouldn't impress King Otto much, so the best approach would be to seize "his little fleet, if that can be done handily." After that, a blockade of Greek ports.

The tone was casual, almost playful—a reminder that for a great power like Britain, crushing a small country's commerce was merely an administrative matter.

The Fleet Moves In

On January 22, 1850, Admiral Parker reported that all vessels of the Greek government had been detained. The blockade was in effect.

But the situation was more complicated than Palmerston had perhaps anticipated. Greece was not entirely independent—it was a state under the joint protection of Britain, France, and Russia, who had guaranteed its independence after the war against the Ottomans. Neither France nor Russia had been consulted about the blockade, and both objected strenuously.

The French were particularly outraged. Their ambassador in London, Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys, was temporarily recalled to Paris in protest. This was a serious diplomatic breach—withdrawing an ambassador is one of the strongest signals of displeasure a nation can send short of war.

Palmerston had also tried to use the blockade as leverage on other disputes with Greece, including territorial claims on the islands of Sapientza and Elafonisos, compensation for robbed British ships, and payment for land that had been taken for the Royal Gardens in Athens without compensating its British owner, the historian George Finlay. Under French and Russian pressure, Britain backed away from these additional demands and focused solely on the Pacifico claim.

The blockade lasted two months. King Otto's reputation in Athens suffered badly—nothing undermines a monarch's prestige like being unable to defend his country's sovereignty. In the end, the Greek government agreed to pay.

The Great Debate

But paying off Pacifico was only the beginning. Back in London, Parliament wanted answers.

The House of Lords moved first. On June 17, 1850, Lord Edward Stanley—who would later become Prime Minister as the Earl of Derby—proposed a motion of censure. The wording was diplomatic but damning: while recognizing Britain's right to protect its subjects abroad, the Lords "regrets to find" that "various claims against the Greek government, doubtful in point of justice or exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by coercive measures."

After debate, the Lords voted in favor of the censure by a majority of 37. Palmerston had been officially rebuked by the upper chamber of Parliament.

The House of Commons, however, was a different arena.

An independent Member of Parliament named John Arthur Roebuck—described by contemporaries as sometimes contrarian—proposed to reverse the Lords' condemnation with a motion affirming that Palmerston's foreign policy had maintained "the honour and dignity of this country" and preserved peace with the nations of the world.

The debate that followed lasted four nights. It became one of the most famous parliamentary exchanges of the century.

Civis Romanus Sum

Palmerston rose to defend himself in a speech that lasted five hours. He didn't merely address the Greek affair—he sought to justify his entire conduct of foreign policy.

The climax came when he invoked the ancient world:

"As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum, so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong."

Civis Romanus sum—I am a Roman citizen. In the ancient world, this phrase was a powerful talisman. Roman citizens could not be bound or beaten without trial. They could appeal to the emperor himself. To harm a Roman citizen was to invite the wrath of the mightiest empire the world had known.

Palmerston was claiming the same status for every British subject. Wherever in the world a British passport-holder traveled, the full might of the Royal Navy stood ready to avenge any insult.

It was stirring rhetoric. It was also, critics pointed out, a recipe for endless conflict with every nation on earth.

The Opposition Responds

Sir Robert Peel rose to answer Palmerston. It would be his last speech to the Commons—he died shortly afterward from injuries sustained in a riding accident. Peel argued that while protecting British subjects was essential, Palmerston's methods had been reckless and had damaged Britain's relationships with other European powers.

William Ewart Gladstone also spoke against the motion. The future Prime Minister—he would serve in that office four separate times—was just forty years old, but already recognized as one of the great orators of his generation. He challenged the very premise of Palmerston's Roman analogy, suggesting that Britain's true strength lay not in intimidation but in justice and moral authority.

But Palmerston had the votes. The House of Commons approved Roebuck's motion by 310 to 264, a majority of forty-six. Where the Lords had censured, the Commons had vindicated.

The Final Accounting

With Parliament divided but the Commons in support, attention turned to actually resolving Pacifico's claims. A convention was signed between Britain and Greece on July 18, 1850, agreeing that King Otto would compensate Pacifico for any "real injury which could be proved, after a full and fair investigation."

That investigation was conducted by a special commission composed of the French, British, and Greek ministers in Lisbon. Why Lisbon? Because Pacifico's largest claim—those twenty-one thousand pounds supposedly owed by Portugal—needed to be verified against Portuguese records.

The commissioners met in February 1851. They searched the archives of the Cortes, the Portuguese parliament, and found that Pacifico had indeed submitted a petition in 1839 with extensive documentation. His claim against Portugal appeared to be legitimate—but the Cortes had simply never gotten around to addressing it.

As for what Greece owed him, the commission's finding was sobering. After all the gunboats and blockades and parliamentary debates, after the withdrawal of the French ambassador and the humiliation of King Otto, the commission awarded David Pacifico the sum of £150 from Greece.

One hundred and fifty pounds. For this, the Royal Navy had blockaded a nation.

The total settlement, including some additional amounts, came to 120,000 drachmas and £500. This was considerably less than Pacifico had originally claimed, but considerably more than the £150 the commission judged he was actually owed.

The Lessons of Gunboat Diplomacy

The Don Pacifico affair became a touchstone for debates about the use of force in foreign policy. Supporters of Palmerston's approach saw it as proof that great powers must stand behind their citizens, no matter how small the individual case. The alternative—allowing foreign governments to abuse British subjects without consequence—would invite ever greater outrages.

Critics saw something quite different: a disproportionate response that damaged Britain's relationships with its allies, humiliated a friendly nation, and in the end resolved a dispute that the Greek courts could have handled. The £150 awarded by the commission suggested that Pacifico's claims had indeed been grossly exaggerated—which was exactly what the Greek government had said from the beginning.

The phrase Civis Romanus sum entered the political lexicon. John F. Kennedy would echo it more than a century later, standing at the Berlin Wall: "Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner."

But there's an irony buried in Palmerston's invocation of Roman citizenship. The Roman Republic and Empire extended citizenship broadly—to freed slaves, to conquered peoples, eventually to all free inhabitants of the empire. Roman citizenship was, in theory at least, universal and color-blind.

David Pacifico was Jewish. His house was attacked because an antisemitic mob blamed him for the cancellation of their Easter tradition. The Portugal of the 1850s still bore the scars of the Inquisition, which had expelled or forcibly converted its Jewish population centuries earlier. In invoking Rome, Palmerston was perhaps claiming for Britain a universality that the Empire didn't always practice.

What Happened to Don Pacifico?

History largely loses track of David Pacifico after his moment of international fame. He received his settlement. His claim against Portugal, validated by the commission but still not paid by the Cortes, presumably remained in bureaucratic limbo.

The British continued to use gunboat diplomacy throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. The phrase itself comes from this era—the practice of sending warships to intimidate smaller nations into compliance with great power demands.

Greece remained under the protection of Britain, France, and Russia, an arrangement that satisfied none of them. King Otto was eventually deposed in 1862, replaced by a Danish prince who took the throne as King George I. The new king proved more durable—he reigned for fifty years before being assassinated in 1913.

And Lord Palmerston? His famous defense saved his position as Foreign Secretary, and he went on to serve twice as Prime Minister. He died in office in 1865, still insisting that the strong arm of England would protect British subjects wherever they might be.

Whether that protection was worth the cost—in treasure, in diplomatic relationships, in the humiliation of smaller nations—remained a question that his successors would continue to debate long after the last Royal Navy ships had sailed home from Piraeus.