Abstract
In early January 1942, only a month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt discussed at length the attitude of Americans toward the British Empire. ‘It’s in the American tradition,’ he said, ‘this distrust, this dislike and even hatred of Britain — the Revolution, you know, and 1812; and India and the Boer War, and all that.’ Lord Halifax sounded a similar note in a letter to the Foreign Office when he warned that, as an empire, ‘we owe the USA and the world a justification of ourselves in these respects. Something of this sentiment is undoubtedly almost universal among Americans, though it varies in intensity. It is a barrier to mutual confidence and holds plain danger for future Anglo-American collaboration on terms which we would consider acceptable.’ The sentiment to which the ambassador referred was one which would find expression on many occasions between 1942 and 1945: that even though England and the United States might find themselves on the same side in the fight against the Axis, this did not imply that there was a genuine unity of aims between the two nations. Moreover, when and if conflict arose between the interests of the United States and those of the British Empire, Americans made it more than clear that it was the aspirations of the former that would prevail.1
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Notes
J. E. Williams, ‘The Joint Declaration on the colonies: an issue in Anglo-American relations, 1942–1944,’ British Journal of International Studies 2 (1976): 267–92;
Thomas A. Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York, 1948), p. 216n.; ‘We’re not Perfect Ourselves,’ Collier’s 109 (4 April 1942): 66;
Francis McCullagh, Catholic World 155 (May 1942): 202–10;
Bruce Bliven, ‘Deadwood at the Top,’ New Republic 106 (2 March 1942): 285–6; ‘Britain’s Problem of Leadership,’ New Republic 107 (6 July 1942): 6–7. Even Churchill’s image was beginning to tarnish in liberal eyes. Writing in Christian Century Charles Clayton Morrison accused the prime minister of seeing the world ‘with the eyes of a Tory Imperialist. He represents the hope of a post-war order imposed from London.’ Bruce Bliven agreed, claiming that Churchill was conducting ‘a white British Tories’ war.’
Charles Clayton Morrison, Mr. ‘Churchill and the Future,’ Christian Century 59 (7 January 1942): 3–4;
Bruce Bliven, Mr. ‘Churchill’s Untotal War,’ New Republic 107 (28 September 1942): 370–2.
Terry H. Anderson, The United States, Great Britain, and the Cold War, 1944–1947 ( Columbia, MO, 1981 ), pp. 3–5;
Wendell L. Willkie, One World (New York, 1943), pp. 14–15. Willkie went on to emphasize the great commercial opportunities which would exist for Americans in a post-imperial world, prompting one of Churchill’s aides to comment bitterly, ‘Political tutelage of backward peoples is wicked, but commercial exploitation without responsibility is to be encouraged.’
Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Vision of Anglo-America: The US—UK Alliance and the Emerging Cold War, 1943–1946 (Cambridge, 1987 ), p. 32;
Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford, 1977), p. 226;
Foster Rhea Dulles and Gerald E. Ridinger, ‘The Anti-Colonial Policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt,’ Political Science Quarterly 70 (March 1955), pp. 5–17.
Mark A. Stoler, The Politics of the Second Front: American Military Planning and Diplomacy in Coalition Warfare, 1941–1943 ( Westport, CT, 1977 ), pp. 58–9;
Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938, 4th edition (New York, 1985), p. 17;
David Reynolds, Warren F. Kimball, and A. O. Chubarian, ‘Legacies: Allies, Enemies, and Posterity,’ in Reynolds, Kimball, and Chubarian (eds.), Allies at War, p. 418;
see also Correlli Barnett, ‘Anglo-American Strategy in Europe,’ in Lane and Temperley (ed.), Rise and Fall, pp. 174–89.
Robert M. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 47; Baylis, Anglo-American Defense Relations, pp. 14–15; Thorne, Allies of a Kind, p. 292;
John J. Sbrega, Anglo-American Relations and Colonialism in East Asia, 1941–1945 (New York, 1983), pp. 15–16; idem., ‘Anglo-American Relations and the Selection of Mountbatten as Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia,’ Military Affairs 46 (October 1982), p. 139;.
Glen C. H. Perry (ed.), ‘Dear Bart’: Washington Views of World War II (Westport, CT, 1982), pp. 257–8, 264–5; Dimbleby and Reynolds, An Ocean Apart, pp. 159–61; Dallek, FDR and American Foreign Policy, p. 385;
Merrill Bartlett and Robert William Love, Jr., ‘Anglo-American Naval Diplomacy and the British Pacific Fleet, 1942–1945,’ American Neptune 42 (July 1982 ), pp. 204–5.
Robert A. Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1967), pp. 143–5; Halifax, Political Report for Third Quarter 1943, in Hachey (ed.), Confidential Dispatches, pp. 127–8.
Halifax to Eden, 18 April 1943, in Nicholas (ed.), Washington Despatches, p. 177; Emery Reeves, ‘Should the British Empire be Broken Up?’ American Mercury 56 (May 1943), p. 553;
Forrest Davis, ‘The British Get Out of the Doghouse,’ Saturday Evening Post 216 (18 September 1943), p. 18; ‘American-British Alliance,’ Collier’s 112 (30 October 1943), p. 78;
Ralph B. Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918–1978 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1978), pp. 83–4; Robert E. Wood to Arthur Vandenberg, 21 April 1944, Wood MSS.
John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 154–5. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership, p. 98.
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© 1999 John E. Moser
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Moser, J.E. (1999). ‘India and the Boer War, And All That’. In: Twisting the Lion’s Tail. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376762_8
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