The Anglo American Paper War

The Paper War and the Development of Anglo-American Nationalisms, 1800-1825 offers fresh insight into the evolution of British and American nationalisms, the maturation of apologetics for slavery, and the early development of anti-Americanism, from approximately 1800 to 1830.

The Paper War and the Development of Anglo-American Nationalisms, 1800-1825 offers fresh insight into the evolution of British and American nationalisms, the maturation of apologetics for slavery, and the early development of anti-Americanism, from approximately 1800 to 1830.

During the crucial period of 1917-1918, the United States superseded Great Britain as the premier power in the world. The differing strategic perspectives of London and Washington were central to the tensions and misunderstandings that separated the two dominant powers in 1918 and determined how these two countries would interact following the Armistice. David R. Woodward traces the projection of American military power to western Europe and analyzes in depth the strategic goals of the American political and military leadership in this first comprehensive study of Anglo-American relations in the land war in Europe. Based on extensive research in British and American archives, the study focuses on Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George, whose relationship was poisoned by the mutual suspicion and hostility generated by their disagreements over strategy and military policy. President Wilson sought to use his country's military effort in western Europe as a tool to gain acceptance for his "new diplomacy." The British, anxious over the Turko-German threat to Asia and their worsening manpower situation, sought to utilize American military intervention for their own political/military purposes. Woodward's use of unpublished sources provides new perspectives on war leadership, and his analysis of the British-American interaction serves as a case study of the inevitable tension between national self-interest and efforts at collective security, even among nations that share many cultural and political values. For historians and anyone interested in military history and World War I, Trial by Friendship fills a gap in the study of Anglo-American relations by providing a strong, well- written study on an area of American history that has received scant attention from scholars.

"Compelling, provocative, and learned. This book is a stunning and sophisticated reevaluation of the American empire. Hopkins tells an old story in a truly new way--American history will never be the same again."--Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office.Office.

As the 2000 census resoundingly demonstrated, the Anglo-Protestant ethnic core of the United States has all but dissolved. In a country founded and settled by their ancestors, British Protestants now make up less than a fifth of the population. This demographic shift has spawned a culture war within white America. While liberals seek to diversify society toward a cosmopolitan endpoint, some conservatives strive to maintain an American ethno-national identity. Eric Kaufmann traces the roots of this culture war from the rise of WASP America after the Revolution to its fall in the 1960s, when social institutions finally began to reflect the nation's ethnic composition. Kaufmann begins his account shortly after independence, when white Protestants with an Anglo-Saxon myth of descent established themselves as the dominant American ethnic group. But from the late 1890s to the 1930s, liberal and cosmopolitan ideological currents within white Anglo-Saxon Protestant America mounted a powerful challenge to WASP hegemony. This struggle against ethnic dominance was mounted not by subaltern immigrant groups but by Anglo-Saxon reformers, notably Jane Addams and John Dewey. It gathered social force by the 1920s, struggling against WASP dominance and achieving institutional breakthrough in the late 1960s, when America truly began to integrate ethnic minorities into mainstream culture.

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject History of Germany - World War I, Weimar Republic, grade: 1 (A), University of Glasgow (Modern History), course: British Foreign Policy, language: English, abstract: I) Introduction: Answering the above question one must look back to the First World War. Various scholars have shown that the origins of tensions in Anglo-American relations derive mostly from problems centred on issues of the Great War. Therefore research on this topic must start slightly before the time frame given by the above question with the examination of the time period following the First World War (1918-1920). Since various issues influenced the decline of Anglo-American relations an essay on this topic should reasonably be arranged into the examination of different issues, rather than in a chronological way. Factors that entailed the decline in Anglo-American relations in the post-war period were the loss of influence and power of Great Britain, related to the financial dependency on the United States, Anglo-American rivalry for naval predominance, Anglo-American rivalry concerning the world′s oil and rubber resources , the war debt issue and the future of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Thomas Buckley has shown that a deep suspicion of Britain existed within the American population and even within the American government. He stated that the predominant view on Britain was that of an arrogant competitor "whose pretensions of leadership failed to recognise realities of British decline and American rise." He reminded the community of Historians of how deep-rooted this suspicion was in the United States of the 1920s and 1930s. The suspicions grew on the belief that Britain worked only for its own interests and therefore always against the United States whose influence increased steadily. A large number of Americans believed that Britain had manipulated the United States into the war to save its very own interests. On the other side of the Atlantic similar resentments dominated the 1920s. British officials and media-representatives pointed out regularly the American strictness on the war debt issue and the danger of loosing the world-leadership. The British Ambassador to Washington wrote in 1921: "The central ambition of this realist school of American politicians is to win for America the position of leading nation in the world and also of leader among the English-speaking nations. To do this they intend to have the strongest navy and the largest mercantile marine. They intend also to prevent us from paying our debt by sending goods to America and they look for the opportunity to treat us as a vassal state so long as the debt remains unpaid." [...]

Too often, scholarship on Anglo-American political relations has focused on mutual social and economic interests between Britain and the United States as the basis for cooperation. Breaking new ground, Anglo-American Relations and the Transmission of Ideas instead explores how ideas, on either side of the Atlantic have mutually influenced each other. In those transnational interactions, there forms a shared tradition of political ideas, facilitating “a common cast of mind” that has served as the basis for transatlantic relations and socio-political values for decades.

This study demonstrates the importance of the decline of British power in the creation of the Cold War.