biography
| name: |
Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1784–1860)
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| biography:
| British statesman and prime minister (1852–5), born in Edinburgh, EC Scotland, UK. He studied at Cambridge, succeeding his grandfather as earl in 1801. He was foreign secretary twice, under the Duke of Wellington (1828–30) and then Sir Robert Peel (1841–6). A confirmed free-trader, he resigned with Peel over the repeal of the corn-laws in 1846. In 1852 he was made prime minister of a coalition government that was immensely popular at first, until he reluctantly committed Britain to an alliance with France and Turkey in the Crimean War in 1854. The gross mismanagement of the war aroused popular discontent, and he was forced to resign. |
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