Special relationship?
ADAM IP SMITH salutes an ambitious survey of the interplay between imperial powers Britain and the US
The Lion and the Eagle: The Interaction of the British and American Empires 1783–1972 by Kathleen Burk As Kathleen Burk points out, in Britain people debate whether the British empire was a good or a bad thing, but in America they debate whether there has ever been an AAmericani empirei at all. Americans may have initially described their new independent nation as an “empire of liberty” but an “anti-imperial” mindset has long been hardwired in American political culture.
On the first question, Burk is studiously disinterested: she is not engaged in evaluating the moral worth of the imperial project as a whole (though she makes drily withering comments about the breathtaking arrogance of some of the individual imperialists). But on the second question, she is in no doubt: of course the US was, and still is, an imperial power. By the early 20th century, the United States had acquired formal colonies of its own and was selfconsciously learning strategies for pacification and economic development from the British. But far more important to this story was the Americans’ imperial projection of power without the trouble of formal colonisation.
Most of the action in this book takes place on those contested edges of empire – in South America and, especially, in China and Japan – beyond the borders of any formal colony. There is an engaging chapter on the brittle disputes over the Canadian border but the real heart of this story is the way in which these two imperial colossuses – one gradually waning, the other gradually rising – circled each other.
There are two levels of explanation apparent in Burk’s account of these imperial adventures. The big picture is the interplay of the UK and the US with other European and, eventually, Asian powers. Burk keeps up a running commentary of who is at what position in the “Great Power League Table”. (Italy, she tells us at one point, “holds the encomium” for being the weakest of the great powers). On this explanatory level, the interaction of the British and the American empires was determined quite straightforwardly by their relative economic strength. But on another level this is also a contingency-filled story of the diplomats, missionaries, naval officers and merchants – the “men on the spot” – who made history happen.
These two great powers, and their sometimes astute, sometimes hapless representatives on the ground envied and emulated, rivalled and riled each other. But underlying their interaction was the assumption that neither was quite as decidedly “foreign” as the other European powers; the metaphor of Anglo-American “cousins” contains an important truth when it comes to the mix of competition and cooperation Burk describes. When the British deployed their military power to bully
Burk is in no doubt: of course the United States was, and still is, an imperial power
the Chinese into letting them smuggle opium to raise revenue to buy Chinese products, it was the Americans who were waiting in the wings to piggyback on crudely won British success. In Japan, it was the Americans who took the lead in forcibly opening up the country to western trade, but the British were on hand to help out the parvenu Americans when needed.
This is a book about a dysfunctional relationship suffused with jealousy, petty fights and mutual sneering, even while each evidently benefitted from the other. If the Americans spent a century or more resenting the British empire and dreaming of its demise, they got their wish after the Second World War and
It was a dysfunctional relationship suffused with petty fights and mutual sneering
even – in the Suez crisis – helped to administer one of the final, fatal blows. Yet as Burk shows, the irony for the Americans was that their imperial partner collapsed just at the moment when its presence in the world would, because of the Cold War, have been most useful. President Lyndon B Johnson fumed with indignation at Harold Wilson’s government’s withdrawal of British military power “east of Aden”, a reaction that would have bemused most of his predecessors.
Kathleen Burk writes in the compelling, authoritative, grand style of her mentor, AJP Taylor, and not many historians do that anymore. Like Taylor, Burk writes with élan about big events over a vast canvas. But, also like him, she never lets her reader forget that history is ultimately about people. It is the characters – eccentric, arrogant or lost – who drive the story forward. And that, in the end, is what makes this book such an enjoyable read.