Elizabeth I Foreign Policy

Elizabeth's Foreign Policy aims

- Avoid costly and risky war

- Avoid helping rebels (this caused conflict with ministers who wished her to champion the protestant cause abroad)

- To assert English independence from France and Spain

- To secure England's northern border

- To limit the power of France

- To protect English trade with Burgundy (the Netherlands): wool and textile made up 90% of English exports

- To make sure the likely invasion point of the Channel coastline was not under the control of any one power. 

How did Elizabeth's aims differ from those of previous Tudor monarchs?

- Unlike Henry VIII she avoided war as this risked both financial and authoritative failures, this mirrored her cautious grandfather Henry VII

- Henry VII had at least wished to achieve some sort of stalemate/peace with France- Elizabeth simply wanted to limit their power

- Unlike her sister Mary Tudor, she was not desperate for an heir so did not look abroad for marriage, thereby asserting English independance