This year, 2015, marks two hundred years of unbroken Anglo-American peace. The Battle of New Orleans, last military event of the War of 1812, ought never to have taken place. A treaty had already been signed at Ghent in Belgium, but news of it had not yet crossed the Atlantic to reach General Andrew Jackson on the American side, or General Edward Pakenham on the British side.
Sometimes it’s difficult to notice things that don’t happen in history. But the absence of war between the United States and Britain is one of the most impressive achievements of the last two centuries. Usually, when one superpower is in decline and another is rising, they fight it out. Far from fighting, however, Britain and the United States achieved a durable friendship that continues today, with immense benefits for ourselves and for the rest of the world.
Time after time the peace could have broken down. The two nations tiptoed to the brink of war in 1859. They squabbled over where the U.S.-Canadian boundary should be drawn among the islands of the Pacific coast. Politicians exchanged angry words but in the end the only casualty was a pig, owned by a British settler named Charles Griffin. It was shot by an American named Lyman Cutlar when he found it uprooting his potatoes. We remember the conflict—ultimately settled with a diplomatic compromise–as “The Pig and Potato War.”
When the American Civil War began two years later, Confederate politicians believed Britain would give them diplomatic recognition, maybe even a military alliance, because southern cotton fed Manchester’s textile factories. The British politicians waited to see whether the Confederates could actually win decisive battlefield victories. They were furious when the U.S. Navy stopped a British ship, the Trent, on the high seas, and abducted two Confederate diplomats, forcing President Lincoln to apologize and release them.
Lincoln in turn was furious when a British-built confederate raider, the Alabama, sank dozens of Union ships, taking more than 2000 Union men prisoner. Despite provocations like these, from both sides, peace again prevailed. When the Civil War was over the case went to arbitration. Britain declined America’s initial demand that it should hand over Canada in compensation, but it did agree to pay damages of $15.5 million.
The big story of Anglo-American relations since then is one of almost continuous cooperation and support. When the hundredth anniversary of the peace was approaching, men like Theodore Roosevelt on the American side, and Cecil Rhodes on the British side, believed that the Anglo-Saxon peoples of the world (i.e. themselves) had a special destiny to rule over what they called the “lesser” races. That was the theme of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Take Up the White Man’s Burden” (1899). It urged America to follow Britain’s example by creating a colonial empire in Cuba and the Philippines.
When World War I began in 1914, America resolved at first to sit out the conflict. Bit by bit, however, public opinion solidified on behalf of Britain and against Germany. When a German submarine sank the British liner Lusitania in 1915, most Americans regarded the act as one of sheer barbarism. America entered the war directly in 1917 after submarines began attacking American ships too. Anglo-American friendship reached new heights as the allies fought their way to victory in November 1918.
Meanwhile, the rich and beautiful daughters of American millionaires were marrying the impoverished sons of British aristocrats, bringing money to Britain and prestigious titles to America. The most famous example was the wedding, in 1874 of Jennie Jerome to Lord Randolph Churchill. Their son Winston was the most famous British person of the twentieth century, and the living embodiment of the Anglo-American special relationship.
Churchill became prime minister in 1940, after a terrifying succession of successes for Hitler that culminated in the conquest of France. Churchill knew that Britain alone could never liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, and that he must enlist American aid. As in the First World War, so in the Second, American public opinion shifted steadily in favor of Britain. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 extinguished isolationism, and from then on Britain and America worked together to defeat Germany and Japan. Churchill went to Washington at once, met President Franklin Roosevelt for the first time, and celebrated Christmas with him in the White House. The next day he addressed a joint session of Congress, an occasion he regarded as the most important speech of his entire life.
The Anglo-American alliance was never frictionless. FDR had to make sure that American soldiers were not dying to prop up the British Empire. Some American commanders, like General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell and Admiral Ernest King, were suspicious of British motives and disliked Churchill. Stilwell joked that the initials of South East Asia Command (S.E.A.C.) really stood for “Save England’s Asian Colonies.”
On the crucial issues, however, the two nations stood shoulder to shoulder. Their agreement to pool all research on nuclear physics enabled the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb more quickly than would otherwise have been possible. Close cooperation in the air war over Germany and then with the D-Day landings in Normandy, launched from England, led to the defeat of Nazism. The atom bomb ended Japanese resistance four months later.
Since World War II Britain, no longer a colonial power, has linked its destiny more closely with the European Union. Ties with the United States have remained close nevertheless, and theirs was the central bond of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during the Cold War. Partnerships like that between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and between Tony Blair and George W. Bush in the 2000s, bore witness to the continuing strength of the Special Relationship.
During these two centuries of peace, English has become the world’s dominant language, Anglo-American institutions including the rule of law and parliamentary democracy have spread across the globe, and the two countries have attained an unrivalled cultural radiance. We are so familiar with it, we might almost forget what an achievement this is. Let’s use this 200th birthday as an occasion for gratitude and remembrance.
