Abstract
The last years of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth saw important changes in international politics. European rivalries reflected and were reflected in imperial activities in Africa and Asia. Japan emerged as a regional power in east Asia; the United States increasingly asserted power in the western hemisphere and began activity in the Pacific. Britain, as a power with literally world-wide interests, was affected by all the developments and had to make adjustments. Expansion in Africa was maintained at the cost of a difficult war. European affairs increasingly demanded involvement. An understanding on imperial matters, with European implications, was reached with France; relations with Russia were stabilized in Asia. In the Pacific, Britain formed an understanding with Japan and welcomed the arrival of American imperialism. And in North and Central America and the Caribbean, Britain, without abandoning any material interests, accepted the assertion of United States hegemony. From the British point of view this was one adjustment among others, but it had a distinctive flavour. Britain was not the only European country affected by American assertiveness, but from the American end, too, the British aspect had a flavour of its own.
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Notes
For British external policy see Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan. Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline 1895–1905 (Princeton, 1988);
J.A.S. Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The Close of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1964);
George Monger, The End of Isolation. British Foreign Policy 1900–1907 (London, 1963);
Paul Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British External Policy, 1865–1980 (London, 1981), Part 1.
For United States foreign policy see Charles S. Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations 1865–1900 (New York, 1976).
For American attitudes to participation in world politics see Robert Endicott Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in American Foreign Relations (Chicago, 1953).
For Anglo-American relations see Charles S. Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding 1898–1903 (Baltimore, 1957);
A.E. Campbell, Great Britain and the United States 1895— 1903 (London, 1960);
Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement. England and the United States 1895–1914 (New York, 1968).
The note is printed in United States, Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, 1862 ff.), henceforth cited as FRUS (with year or special volume title), 1895, pp. 545–76.
For the earlier history of the boundary problem see R.A. Humphreys, Tradition and Revolt in Latin America, and other essays (London, 1969) pp. 186–202.
For the crisis see, in addition to works cited in note 1, J.A.S. Grenville and G.B. Young, Politics, Strategy and American Diplomacy. Studies in Foreign Policy 1873–1917 (New Haven and London, 1966).
Chamberlain to Selborne, 20 Dec. 1895; Chamberlain diary, 9 Jan. 1896; Chamberlain to Salisbury, 1 Feb., University of Birmingham, Chamberlain Papers, JC 7/5/1B/4; JC 7/5/1B/14; JC 5/67/45; J.L. Garvin, The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, III (London, 1934), p. 160.
Blanche Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour (London, 1936), pp. 225–6.
Economist, 26 Jan. 1896; William Watson, The Purple East (London, 1896), pp. 25–6. This book was a collection of poems about Armenia, first published in the Westminster Gazette. In the one quoted above, Watson suggested that if the United States found peace too tame she should join Britain in smiting Turkey and succouring the Armenians.
Bryce to Roosevelt, 1 Jan. 1896; Bryce to Villard, 4 Jan., H.A.L. Fisher, James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M. (London and New York, 1927), pp. 318–20.
For Bryce’s early visits to the United States see Edmund Ions, James Bryce and American Democracy 1870–1922 (London, 1968).
Franklin Eastman, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1894.
Godkin to Bryce, 9 Jan. 1896, The Gilded Age. Letters of E.L. Godkin, ed. William M. Armstrong (Albany, 1974), pp. 477–9.
George Burton Adams, Why Americans Dislike England (Philadelphia, 1896), pp. 17–20.
John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge (New York, 1953), pp. 152–3;
William C. Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), p. 90;
Lodge, Speeches and Addresses, 1884–1909 (Boston, 1909), pp. 181–94;
Lodge, Forum, Mar. 1895; Lodge, North American Review, Jun.
Theodore S. Woolsey, Forum, Feb. 1896.
A.T. Mahan in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1895,
reprinted in Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future (Boston, 1897), pp. 168–70;
Mahan to James Thursfield, 10 Jan. 1896; Mahan to Bouverie Clark, 17 Jan., Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, ed. Robert Seager and Doris D. Maguire (Annapolis, 1975), II, pp. 441–4.
Sidney Low, Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1896.
Accounts of the whole episode in J.A.S. Grenville, ‘Great Britain and the Isthmian Canal, 1898–1901’, American Historical Review, LXI (1955) pp. 48–69;
A. Campbell, Great Britain and the United States; Grenville, Lord Salisbury; C. Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding. For the development of American power in the Caribbean see David Healy, Drive to Hegemony. The United States in the Caribbean 1898–1917 (Madison, 1988).
Benjamin Taylor, Nineteenth Century, Mar. 1900.
Roosevelt to Hay, 18 Feb. 1900, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. E.E. Morison (Cambridge, MA, 1951–4), II, p. 1192.
Samuel E. Moffat, Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1901.
Lee to Roosevelt, 2 Apr. 1901; Roosevelt to Lee, 18 Mar., D.H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt and his English Correspondents (Philadelphia, 1973), pp. 11, 43–4; Roosevelt, Letters, III, pp. 19–21.
For the whole question see Norman Penlington, The Alaska Boundary Dispute, a critical reappraisal (Toronto, 1972);
The Alaska Boundary Dispute, ed. John A. Munro (Ottawa, 1970);
C.P. Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict, I (Toronto, 1977); C. Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding.
Donald F. Warner, The Idea of Continental Union. Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States 1849–1893 (Lexington, 1960);
Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny (Baltimore, 1935). Goldwin Smith, a figure in English university and other reform, lived in Canada from 1871 and wrote prolifically in newspapers and journals. He disliked Canadian loyalism and ‘came to the conviction that the separation of the two great bodies of English-speaking people on the American continent would not last forever, and that union, free and equal, was ... the decree of destiny’.
Goldwin Smith, Reminiscences (New York, 1910), p. 439.
See his Canada and the Canadian Question (London, New York and Toronto, 1891); Elisabeth Wallace, Goldwin Smith: Victorian Liberal (Toronto, 1957).
Dufferin to the Queen, 1 Jan. 1896, quoted by Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815–1908 (London, 1967), pp. 339–40. The two-power standard had been effectively laid down in 1889, and reaffirmed in 1893. Parl. Deb., 3rd ser., vol. 333, col. 1171; 4th ser., vol. 19, col. 1817.
Mahan, Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1890, vol. 66, reprinted in The Interest of America in Sea Power,
Sir G.S. Clarke, Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1898.
Pauncefote to Salisbury, 26 May 1898, quoted by R.G. Neale, Britain and American Imperialism, 1898–1900 (Brisbane, 1965), p. 113.
Roosevelt to Selous, 7 Feb. 1900, Letters, II, pp. 1175–7; Lodge to Roosevelt, 2 Feb., Selections from the Letters of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, ed. H.C. Lodge (New York, 1925), I, p. 446;
Samuel E. Moffat, Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1901.
It is ironic that it appears to have been Lodge who, in his book The War with Spain, started the myth that the British ships, positioning themselves between the German squadron and Admiral Dewey’s force bombarding Manila in April 1898, did so in order to prevent a German attack on the United States ships: Thomas A. Bailey, ‘Dewey and the Germans at Manila Bay’, American Historical Review, XLV (1939), pp. 59–81.
Nineteenth Century, Sep. 1898. Kipling’s poem was published in The Times of 4 Feb. 1899 and in the New York Sun and Tribune on 5 Feb. Kipling had sent it to Roosevelt in January. For American imperialist opinion see David Healy, US Expansionism. The Imperial Urge in the 1890s (Madison, 1970).
W.E. Gladstone, North American Review, Sep.–Oct. 1878. For the intellectual origins of the talk of Anglo-Saxon kinship see Hugh Tulloch, ‘Changing British Attitudes towards the United States in the 1880s’, Historical Journal, XX (1977), pp. 825–40;
Hugh Tulloch, James Bryce’s American Commonwealth. The Anglo-American Background (London, 1988).
W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes (London, 1902). By a codicil Rhodes established scholarships for German students also, ‘for a good understanding between England, Germany and the United States of America will secure the peace of the world and educational relations form the strongest tie’.
Thomas Archdeacon, Becoming American. An Ethnic History (New York and London, 1983), pp. 25–6;
United States, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States. Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial ed. (Washington, 1975), Part 1, pp. 8, 116–18.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits (London, 1856): Works (London, 1894 ed.) II, p. 122;
Josiah Strong, Our Country (New York, 1885), pp. 200–18;
George Burton Adams, Atlantic Monthly, Jul. 1896;
Brooks Adams, America’s Economic Supremacy (New York, 1900), passim;
Francis A. Walker, Forum, 1891, 642.
Lodge, Historical and Political Essays (Boston, 1892), pp. 142–66.
F.P. Dunne, Mr Dooley in Peace and in War (Boston, 1899), pp. 53–7.
For ‘Mr Dooley’ see Elmer Ellis, Mr Dooley’s America. A Life of Finley Peter Dunne (New York, 1941).
For Anglo-Saxonism and the restriction of immigration see Barbara Miller Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants. A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1956);
John Higham, Strangers in the Land. Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 (New York, 1955).
Arthur Silva White, North American Review, Apr. 1894.
A.V. Dicey, Contemporary Review, Apr. 1897.
Andrew Carnegie, North American Review, Jun. 1893, Jan. 1899;
Carnegie, The Reunion of Britain and America: A Look Ahead (Edinburgh, 1898): he saw no problem over the British colonial empire or India, which would soon be put on the road to independence; and he included the Irish among Britons.
Cf. Carnegie to Balfour, 23 Jul. 1903, Burton J. Hendrick, Life of Andrew Carnegie (Garden City, NY, 1932), II, pp. 190–3.
W.T. Stead, The Americanization of the World (London and New York, 1901), p. 151.
Olney, Atlantic Monthly, May 1898;
Tyler Dennett, John Hay (New York, 1934), p. 221.
Mahan, National Review, Feb. 1903,
reprinted in Mahan, Naval Administration and Warfare (Boston, 1908).
Archibald Hurd, Nineteenth Century, Mar. 1907;
Ottley to Vaughan Nash, 26 May 1909, quoted by Arthur S. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era 1904–1919, I (London, 1961), pp. 184–5.
Mahan, Letters and Papers, II, p. 589; III, pp. 291–2; Mahan, North American Review, Mar. 1911,
reprinted in Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration (New York, 1912), pp. 181–5.
Capt. P.R. Hobson, North American Review, Oct. 1902.
George Harvey, Nineteenth Century, Apr. 1904; Roosevelt to Spring Rice, 11 Aug. 1899, Letters, II, pp. 1049–53.
Sir Christopher Furness, The American Invasion (London, 1902), pp. 29–30;
B.H. Thwaite, The American Invasion. Or England’s Commercial Danger and the Triumphal Progress of the United States, with Remedies proposed to enable England to Preserve her Industrial Position (London, 1902), p. 5;
F.A. Mackenzie, The American Invaders (London, 1902), pp. 142–3; Review of Reviews, Oct. 1901, ‘Wake Up! John Bull’ supplement;
J. Ellis Barker, Drifting (London, 1901). The Review of Reviews ran a series of supplements on the condition of Britain from September 1901 to the middle of 1904.
See Richard Heathcote Heindel, The American Impact on Great Britain 1898–1914 (Philadelphia, 1940).
Carden to Grey, 12 Sep. 1913, PRO, FO 371/1676. See D.C.M. Platt, Latin America and British Trade 1806–1914 (London, 1972).
Vivian Vale, The American Peril. Challenge to Britain on the North Atlantic (Manchester, 1984) is a thorough account of the whole episode.
John Bassett Moore, address to the Society of the University of Virginia, 1899, Collected Papers of John Bassett Moore, ed. Edwin Borchard (New Haven, 1944), II, p. 202.
See also Archibald R. Colquhoun, Greater America (London and New York, 1904);
Archibald Cary Coolidge, The United States as a World Power (New York, 1908).
Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909), ch. 10 (in 1914 Croly became founding editor of the New Republic);
Lewis Einstein, American Foreign Policy (Boston, 1909), pp. 183–92.
Roosevelt to Whitelaw Reid, 28 Apr. 27 Jun. 1906, Letters, V, pp. 230–51, 318–20; Hermann Freiherr von Eckardstein, Die Isolierung Deutschlands (Leipzig, 1921), p. 175;
Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore, 1956), chs 5–6.
Roosevelt to Dunne, 23 Nov. 1904; Roosevelt to Lee, 6 Jun. 1905, Letters, IV, pp. 1042, 1207. For the Panama canal tolls see Warren G. Kneer, Great Britain and the Caribbean 1901–1913: A Study in Anglo-American Relations (East Lansing, 1975).
For Mexico see Peter Calvert, The Mexican Revolution 1910–1914. The Diplomacy of Anglo-American Conflict (Cambridge, 1968).
Mahan to Roosevelt, 24 Aug. 1906, quoted by Richard D. Challener, Admirals, Generals, and American Foreign Policy 1898–1914 (Princeton, 1973), pp. 26–8.
None of the papers presented to the Naval War College’s summer conference of 1913 included the possibility of war with Britain as a serious factor in American strategic calculations: William Reynolds Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific 1909–1922 (Austin and London, 1971), p. 142.
BD, VIII, pp. 503–604. See Ian Nish, Alliance in Decline. A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908–23 (London, 1972).
Kenneth Young, Arthur James Balfour (London, 1963), pp. 277–83. Balfour sent a copy of the paper to Roosevelt.
The Times, 3 and 5 Dec. 1910; Contemporary Review, Jan. 1911; Review of Reviews, Jan.; Elting E. Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Boston, 1942), pp. 276–85. ‘Woodman, spare that tree’, by George Pope Morris, an American poet and journalist, was written about 1837 and set to music by Henry Russell. The ballad, and instrumental versions, were reissued many times in the next 40 years. The title was still well enough known to be reused in the 1940s.
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© 1996 Anne Orde
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Orde, A. (1996). Britain and the Assertion of American Hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, 1895–1914. In: The Eclipse of Great Britain. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24924-4_2
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