Unlikely Allies: Britain, America, and the Origins of the Special Relationship, by Duncan Andrew Campbell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Unlikely Allies: Britain, America, and the Origins of the Special Relationship William Anthony Hay (bio) Unlikely Allies: Britain, America, and the Origins of the Special Relationship, by Duncan Andrew Campbell; pp. vii + 307. London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2007, £30.00, $34.95. History involves not only understanding the past but also explaining how the present came to be. Duncan Andrew Campbell takes up that question in exploring Anglo-American relations over the century before a special relationship emerged between Britain and the United States. In the early nineteenth century, lingering resentments from the American Revolution and the War of 1812 were the primary special aspects of the Anglo-American [End Page 359] relationship. Campbell notes Alexis de Tocqueville's observation "that he could conceive of no hatred more poisonous than that which Americans felt for Britain" (108–09), and the recurring vituperation of England in Congressional debates underlines the point. The War of 1812 had created resentment among Britons who saw it as a betrayal. Those in Britain and the United States who resisted animosity nonetheless saw the other as just another nation among nations rather than one with special ties. So what changed the underlying dynamic? Campbell argues that the development of a wide network of connections ultimately bridged not only the differences but also the mutual distrust and incomprehension. By the late nineteenth century, leading figures in Britain and the United States had come to see fundamental commonalities that distinguished them from other countries. Tensions over Canada's position in North America gradually faded, and British views changed once America ceased to be a potential adversary. Similarly, a generation of Americans saw Britain in a more positive light. Campbell repeatedly acknowledges countervailing forces to the convergence he describes but argues for an overall pattern that made possible the special relationship. He "leans more toward a British perspective of the United States than an American view of Britain" (8–9), and the book strives to highlight dimensions overlooked in a focus on North America. Conflict between American determination to assert independence and British disdain for a society whose sole merits derived from an English heritage set the dynamic behind Anglo-American relations. "Who reads an American book?" the Whig author Sydney Smith asked sarcastically in an 1820 issue of the Edinburgh Review. In a chapter titled after Smith's question, Campbell discusses Robert Southey, Smith's Tory counterpart, who discerned a national character of low and lying knavery that the Canadian writer Thomas Haliburton captured in the Yankee peddler Sam Slick. English travel writers, notably Frances Trollope, elaborated the theme with accounts of rough accommodations and uncouth manners. American writers in turn resented British condescension. James Fenimore Cooper, whose books were widely read in Britain, urged Americans to secure their "mental independence" (qtd. in Campbell 49). Determination to escape what later would be called the "cultural cringe" shaped American attitudes. Nathaniel Hawthorne's uneasy balancing of a romanticized view of Britain with resentment toward it marked a typical mid-century American perspective. Geopolitical factors also shaped relations by casting Britain and the United States as rivals. Pressures of competing interests generated antagonism. Menacing Canada threatened Britain itself. Lord Palmerston viewed Washington as always pushing for advantage and treating efforts at conciliation as signs of weakness to be exploited, while Andrew Jackson feared British efforts at encirclement, particularly when the Republic of Texas made overtures to London during the 1840s. Britain's global maritime empire brought interests that generated friction with the American continental empire built by westward expansion. The fact that confrontations were avoided or resolved did not remove the potential for confrontation until well after the American Civil War. Indeed, the great struggle between Union and Confederacy amplified resentments on both sides of the Atlantic. Campbell also notes trends that, from an early stage, brought Britain and the United States together. Independence had not fundamentally altered economic relations. Partnership within an Atlantic trading system backed by British investment became the foundation for expansion across the American continent. The British [End Page 360] writer John Wilson Croker described New York as "a suburb of Liverpool, or, if you will, Liverpool of New York" making the...