Anglo-American relations: Encyclopedia II - Anglo-American relations - History

Anglo-American relations - History

Anglo-American relations - Origins

The British established many colonies in the New World. The Thirteen Colonies were reliant on Britain for military protection from the French colonies to the north during the French and Indian Wars but after this threat was removed, the American Revolution in religion and philosophy and the British desire to impose taxes to pay for the wars produced a separatist movement. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 led to the American Revolutionary War. The British army was unable to crush the rebellion and after the Americans won a decisive victory at the Battle of Yorktown (1781), the war was ended by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

Anglo-American relations - War of 1812

The United States was dependent on its former rulers for the protection of its shipping and the next several years were marked by times of tension and disagreements over maritime trade. The United States vacillated between pursuing closer relations with France and with Britain. The Indian Wars were another source of disputes as the United States expanded west, though the British did not support their former allies. However, the War Hawks sought to remove the threat from the remaining British colonies by conquest. They took advantage of a trade dispute dating from 1807, when the British had prohibited their trade partners from trading with France by the Orders in Council (1807). The United States had responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, but had gradually been forced to climb down because of smuggling and the ability of British merchants to find new markets. The War of 1812 followed further disputes over impressment and the acquisition of all Louisiana (New France) by the United States. The British considered the Americans to be aiding Napoleon Bonaparte and the Americans thought the UK was trying to overturn the Treaty of Paris (1783) by interfering in the Louisiana Purchase. The Americans burnt Fort York in the Battle of York, but were driven back from the northern colonies and the British responded with the Burning of Washington. The war became unpopular in New England because of the British blockade, but had ended in an inconclusive stalemate before the discord could threaten the Union.

Anglo-American relations - American Civil War

The British had passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, and all slaves in the British Empire were emancipated in 1833. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had expressed American hostility to European colonialism. However, the Mexican War of 1846-8 threatened the extension of slavery to the former Mexican territories, where it had formerly been outlawed. Free and slave states were at the time evenly balanced, and the dispute over the future of the new territories led to the American Civil War. The Confederate States of America assumed that the British would prove sympathetic despite their opposition to slavery. Though their first attempt to provoke British intervention by using an embargo of cotton exports was a failure, the Trent Affair, when a United States ship stopped a British ship and took off two Confederate diplomats, almost provoked a third war between Britain and the United States, but Lincoln was against fighting on two fronts and Seward was able to smooth matters over. The British did allow the CSS Alabama to leave port as a commerce raider but prevented other completed Confederate ships from doing so. After the war Britain abided by the arbitration of an international tribunal and paid compensation to the United States for the activities of the Alabama as part of the Treaty of Washington (1871).

Anglo-American relations - World War I

After the Spanish-American War of 1898 the United States had acquired an overseas empire and had begun to build a fleet to go with it. At the beginning of World War I, both the United Kingdom and Germany engaged in propaganda campaigns designed to win over the United States. The British were able to guarantee a price for American cotton producers, who were the most affected by the loss of trade with Germany and Central Europe. The anglophile President Wilson then opted to allow the munitions trade to continue, despite disputes over freedom of the seas because of the British blockade of Germany and complaints of a 'navalism' like German 'militarism'. This policy meant that the United States would supply only the Entente powers. When Germany responded with a submarine blockade of Britain, the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat led to a protest by the United States and the sinkings stopped.

Germany returned to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 in the belief that Britain would be forced to make peace before the United States could mobilise. After the Zimmermann Telegram Wilson, who had been re-elected for keeping the peace, declared war. Though Wilson had wanted to wage war for cause of humanity the negotiations over the Treaty of Versailles made plain that his diplomatic position had weakened with victory. The borders of Europe were redrawn on the basis of national self-determination- with the exception of Germany, because of the French desire for a punitive peace. Though Wilson was against large-scale war reparations from Germany, he also insisted that the British and French pay their war debts, an attitude which caused resentment.

Anglo-American relations - Inter-war years

The Great War was the end of the Royal Navy's superiority, an eclipse acknowledged in the Washington Naval Treaty, when the United States and Britain were allocated equal tonnage quotas. United States policies on immigration and trade fostered a Pacific rivalry with Japan rather than an Atlantic rivalry, though during the Great Depression the United States was preoccupied with its own economic recovery and was only sporadically active in foreign affairs, an isolationist policy. Britain relied on the ineffective League of Nations as a policy instrument during the Spanish Civil War and then pursued the appeasement of Nazi Germany to gain time for rearmament. The Abdication Crisis, while absorbing popular interest in both countries, did not become an foreign relations issue, with Mrs. Simpson seen as being rejected as unsuitable rather than as an American.

Anglo-American relations - World War II

Though the American public was generally sympathetic to Britain and France, there was popular opposition to actual involvement in the war. Roosevelt's cash-and-carry policy allowed Britain and France to order munitions from the United States. Churchill, whose mother was American, had become prime minister after the failure to prevent the German invasion of Norway, and after the fall of France, Roosevelt allowed Britain all aid short of war, including the 1940 Destroyers for Bases Agreement and Lend-lease. Before Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war, two U.S. Navy destroyers had already been torpedoed on convoy duties in the North Atlantic. The US then became heavily involved in the war in Europe. It was during this period of extremely close co-operation that the special relationship was created.

Anglo-American relations - Cold War

At the end of World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom became two of the founder members of the United Nations, as well as two of the five permanent members of the Security Council. They were suspicious of the motives of their former ally, the USSR, under Stalin. Rising tensions between the capitalist and communist powers led to the Cold War and an era of close cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom which included the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a mutual-defense alliance. Forces from both countries were involved in the Korean War, fighting under United Nations command. The United States had become the leading world power and pursued a mixed anti-colonial anti-communist policy, refusing to support the French attempt to retain Indochina and threatening to impose financial sanctions on Britain over Suez. As the Americans concentrated on their technological rivalry with the Soviet Union and waged an unpopular proxy war in Vietnam, Anti-Americanism became a factor in Europe, though perhaps not as much in Britain. However, Wilson refused to send British troops to Vietnam. Protests against the introduction of medium-range weapons which might allow a nuclear war to be confined to Europe became a feature of British politics in the eighties.

Despite an initally non-commital response to the 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina (which led to the Falklands Conflict) The United States was eventually supportive of the UK's military campaign to regain the islands, and had supplied the British Army with Stinger missiles prior to their deployment.

Throughout the 1980s Margaret Thatcher was strongly supportive of President Reagan's stance towards the Soviet Union. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, both the British and American governments provided arms to the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen rebels. Both Reagan and Thatcher met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on separate occasions.

Anglo-American relations - Post Cold War

Both the United States and Britain provided forces for the coalition army which liberated Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War. President Clinton attempted to minimise American involvements abroad. The British Labour Party were elected to office in 1997 for the first time in eighteen years. Blair used Clinton's expression 'Third Way' to describe the ideology of his own party. Forces from both countries were again used to impose a peace during the Kosovo War. This led to the 'mass graves' controversy, with claims that the Kosovar Albanians were facing genocide becoming disputed.

The United States became involved in negotiations over peace in Northern Ireland, and this may have helped to secure the eventual disarmament of the IRA.

Anglo-American relations - War on Terror

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, there was an enormous outpouring of sympathy from the United Kingdom for the United States, and Blair became perhaps President George W. Bush's strongest international supporter. The United States declared a War on Terror following the attacks. British forces participated in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and unlike France, Germany, and Russia, the United Kingdom supported the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After the United States, the United Kingdom contributed the most troops to the coalition that entered Iraq. The failure to discover the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq had been claimed to possess has led to an ongoing controversy about the use of intelligence before the invasion by the leaders of both countries.

The 7 July 2005 London bombings emphasised the difference in the nature of the terrorist threat to each country, with the United States threatened by external enemies and Britain, with a sizable Muslim minority, having an internal security problem as well.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki