The lion and the eagle: the interaction of the British and American empires, 1783–1972

Abstract

In a moment of exasperation, Sir William Gove Ouseley, a special British envoy to the United States, noted in 1858 that British views of the youthful and exuberant United States were based more on sentiment than strict observance of what British interests would and should require. Although Sir William's observation has been repeated many times since, I for one have yet to come across a scholarly study which explicates the origins and the causation of what one might call British ‘Americanophilia’ in the nineteenth century. It is with this background in mind that I approached Kathleen Burk's new book, The lion and the eagle. In her preface, Burk states that she wanted to take up the topic of how the two nations interacted with each other as ‘empires’. She defines empire as a ‘state which rules over, or has significant influence over, territories outside its original borders, without incorporating them’ (p. 1). Burk divides the book into five sections, which run from Anglo-American relations in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence to the early 1970s. This book is a narrative history, which is aimed at general readers as opposed to specialists or academics and the text relies heavily on the existing secondary source material. The first chapter shows that, already by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a species of Americanophilia could be found in the upper reaches of British officialdom and the cabinet. For example, even the Viscount Castlereagh was of the opinion that ‘there are no two states whose friendly relations are of more practical value to each other’ (p. 81). Which, in light of what Burk correctly notes as the ‘fervent and pervasive Anglophobia’ which afflicted the United States for the much of the nineteenth century, reads rather oddly. Unfortunately, beyond stating that ‘it was a curious situation’, Burk does not provide readers with more insight into this strange dichotomy.