Great Britain, Relations With

Views 3,935,805 Updated Oct 24 2020

GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH

GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH. The United Kingdom and

the United States (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-
political-geography/united-states) have shared a faith in
commercial and geographic expansion and in rights
guaranteed by written laws, commonalities of religion and
language, and a belief that each was a chosen people destined
to rule whole continents. Commercial competition and conflicting aspirations for the Western
Hemisphere made the two frequent rivals throughout the nineteenth century. It took opposition
to common adversaries through two world wars and the Cold War to develop the special
relationship with which they entered the twenty-first century.

In 1776, 90 percent of white colonists traced their roots to Protestant immigrants from Britain.
After the French and Indian War (1754–1763), however, London damaged these bonds by
limiting westward expansion and through heavy taxation. Armed with predictions that their
population would double in every generation, revolutionaries such as Benjamin Franklin
(/people/history/us-history-biographies/benjamin-franklin) preached that demography held the
key to independence and to eventual continental dominance.

More than 30 percent of Americans remained loyal to the British Crown throughout the
Revolution (1775–1783), and rebel leaders justified their revolt as a defense of rights guaranteed
to free Britons. Theirs was not a fratricidal attempt to sever ties with the British people, Thomas
Jefferson (/people/history/us-history-biographies/thomas-jefferson) wrote in the Declaration
of Independence (/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/declaration-independence), it
was instead a war waged solely against Britain's tyrannical King George III
(/people/history/british-and-irish-history-biographies/george-iii). This intermingling of loyalties
and war aims has led many historians to consider the conflict more a transatlantic British civil
war than a traditional revolution.

America's 1778 accord with France, Britain's traditional enemy, marked the diplomatic turning
point of the war. French money and naval power enabled George Washington
(/people/history/us-history-biographies/george-washington)'s continental armies to win a
decisive victory at Yorktown in 1781. London soon sued for peace, and American diplomats
agreed to terms on 30 November 1782, breaking their promise to France that they would not
sign a separate accord. Franklin and his fellow diplomats believed their country needed British
trade to prosper and an accessible frontier to grow, and the 1783 Peace of Paris promised both.
It gave Americans access to valuable Newfoundland fishing grounds and a western boundary of
the Mississippi River in exchange for guarantees protecting loyalists and British debts. With
peace in hand, a bitter Parliament moved immediately to contain future Yankee expansion, by
refusing to relinquish forts on the American side of the Canadian border, and by closing the
lucrative West Indies (/places/latin-america-and-caribbean/caribbean-political-
geography/west-indies) to American traders.

Peace only reinforced the new country's position as Britain's economic vassal, as Americans
purchased three times what they sold to Britain in 1783 alone. A postwar depression brought on
in part by Parliament's punitive measures invigorated investment in domestic manufacturing
and spurred the search for alternative markets, however, while also aiding proponents of a
federal government (/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-
science-terms-and-concepts-28) powerful enough to regulate foreign trade. By 1795, the
percentage of American imports originating in Britain had declined from nearly 90 percent to a
more manageable 35 percent (where it remained until the 1850s), accounting for nearly 20
percent of Britain's overall trade. Across the Atlantic, the embarrassing defeat in North America
(/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-regions/oceans-and-continents/north-america)
prompted Parliament to implement naval and financial reforms, and helped reorient London's
imperial aspirations toward India and Asia, changes that enabled Britain's eventual triumph over
Napoleonic France. The defeat at Yorktown, therefore, paradoxically sewed the seeds of victory
at Waterloo, just as British economic efforts to weaken and divide its former colonies after 1783
helped spawn the more cohesive federal constitution.

Relations With The New Nation

Dependence on Atlantic trade soon brought Europe's troubles to America. The 1789 French
Revolution (/history/modern-europe/french-history/french-revolution) sparked a series of
bloody wars that ravaged Europe for a generation. Many Americans initially saw opportunity in
the Old World's woes, but dreams of political isolation vanished as French and British raiders
preyed on American vessels. Britain seized 250 American ships in 1793 alone, risking war and
disrupting the tariff fees considered vital to Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton
(/people/history/us-history-biographies/alexander-hamilton)'s national financial program.
President George Washington (/people/history/us-history-biographies/george-washington)
dispatched Chief Justice (/social-sciences-and-law/law/supreme-court/chief-justice) John
Jay (/people/history/us-history-biographies/john-jay) to London in search of a peaceful
solution, but Britain refused to cease badgering American ships or to halt the hated
impressment of American crews into the Royal Navy (/history/modern-europe/british-and-
irish-history/royal-navy). Jay did win trade concessions in India and procured another British
pledge to relinquish its Canadian strongholds. His work was harshly criticized at home for his
failure to secure neutral shipping rights, but Jay's Treaty solidified American claims to the Ohio
Valley (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-physical-geography/ohio-valley) and opened
commercial routes so lucrative that American vessels carried 70 percent of India's trade by
1801.
The Napoleonic Wars (/history/modern-europe/wars-and-battles/napoleonic-wars) drew
America deeper into the European conflict, and French and American ships waged an
undeclared war by 1799. British warships temporarily convoyed Yankee vessels filled with grain
for British soldiers fighting in Spain, but this Anglo-American rapprochement was short-lived.
Britain embargoed European ports controlled by Napoleon in 1807, in counter to France's 1806
embargo on British trade. Trapped between two European juggernauts, the United States
(/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-geography/united-states) could do little to
protect its vessels against a British fleet that possessed three ships for every American cannon.
President Thomas Jefferson (/people/history/us-history-biographies/thomas-jefferson)
responded with an embargo of his own on European trade in 1807, but when sanctions failed
and British naval impressment continued to rise, a sharply divided Congress declared war in
1812.

The War of 1812 (/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/war-1812) solved little, but,

although British marines burned Washington, D.C., the United States proved its permanence.
Britain could not conquer it, nor would Americans forsake their claims to Maine and the
Northwest. Freed from the fear of European invasion after hostilities ended with the 1814 Treaty
of Ghent (/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/treaty-ghent), the United States could
finally turn its attention fully toward development and expansion. By 1820, more people lived in
states formed after 1789 than had lived in the entire country in 1776. The focus of Anglo-
Dictionary of American History Engel, Jeffrey A.
American relations moved west as well. Settlers from both countries poured into new territories

Great Britain, Relations With

Views 2,993,932 Updated Nov 2 2020

GREAT BRITAIN (/places/britain-ireland-france-and-low-countries/british-and-irish-political-

geography/great-britain), RELATIONS WITH

Russia (/places/commonwealth-independent-states-and-baltic-nations/cis-and-baltic-
political-geography/russia)'s relations with Great Britain (/places/britain-ireland-france-and-
low-countries/british-and-irish-political-geography/great-britain) have been marked by
chronic tension. During the nineteenth century, the British were keenly aware of tsarist Russia's
expansion into Central Asia (/places/commonwealth-independent-states-and-baltic-
nations/cis-and-baltic-political-geography-129) and of the menace it might hold for lands in
the British Commonwealth, particularly India (/places/asia/indian-political-geography/india).
Twice during that century the British invaded Afghanistan (/places/asia/afghanistan-political-
geography/afghanistan) to forestall what they perceived as a Russian threat to occupy the
country and use it as a staging area for an attack on India. Prophetic of George Kennan
(/people/history/us-history-biographies/george-kennan)'s "X" telegram of 1946 and the U.S.
policy of containment, the British foreign minister Lord Palmerston said in 1853: "The policy and
practice of the Russian government has always been to push forward its encroachments as fast
and as far as the apathy or want of firmness of other governments would allow it to go, but
always to stop and retire when it was met with decided resistance and then to wait for the next
favorable opportunity." That same year the British decided to resist the effort by Tsar Nicholas I
(1796–1855) to enhance Russian power and influence over the Black Sea (/places/oceans-
continents-and-polar-regions/oceans-and-continents/black-sea) region and the Ottoman
Empire (/history/modern-europe/turkish-and-ottoman-history/ottoman-empire). War broke
out between Russia and Turkey (/places/asia/turkey-political-geography/turkey-republic) in
October 1853 over a dispute about religious rights in the Holy Land (/places/asia/israeli-
political-geography/holy-land). Great Britain (/places/britain-ireland-france-and-low-
countries/british-and-irish-political-geography/great-britain) and France (/places/britain-
ireland-france-and-low-countries/french-political-geography/france) joined forces with Turkey
and laid siege to Sevastopol, Russia's naval base in the Crimea (/places/commonwealth-
independent-states-and-baltic-nations/cis-and-baltic-political-geography/crimea), and in
September 1855 the Russians were forced to accept defeat. The Treaty of Paris
(/places/britain-ireland-france-and-low-countries/french-political-geography/paris) (March
30, 1856), ending the war, was a serious diplomatic setback for Russia, because it guaranteed
the integrity of Ottoman Turkey and obliged Russia to surrender southern Bessarabia, at the
mouth of the Danube (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/balkans-physical-
geography/danube). The Crimean War (/history/modern-europe/wars-and-battles/crimean-
war) failed to settle the Russian-British rivalry, but it impressed upon Nicholas's successor,
Alexander II (/people/history/russian-soviet-and-cis-history-biographies/alexander-ii), the
need to overcome Russia's backwardness in order to compete successfully with Britain
(/places/britain-ireland-france-and-low-countries/british-and-irish-political-
geography/britain) and the other European powers.

As a further result of the Crimean War (/history/modern-europe/wars-and-battles/crimean-

war), Austria (/places/germany-scandinavia-and-central-europe/austria-political-
geography/austria), which had sided with Great Britain (/places/britain-ireland-france-and-
low-countries/british-and-irish-political-geography/great-britain) and France, lost Russia's
support in Central European affairs. Russia joined the Triple Entente with Britain and France in
1907, more as a result of the widened gap between it and the two Germanic powers and
improved relations with Britain's ally, Japan (/places/asia/japanese-political-geography/japan),
than out of any fondness for Britain and France. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand
(/people/literature-and-arts/music-popular-and-jazz-biographies/franz-ferdinand) was
assassinated (June 28, 1914), Russia was not prepared to see Austria-Hungary
(/places/germany-scandinavia-and-central-europe/hungarian-political-geography/hungary)
defeat Serbia (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/former-yugoslavian-political-
geography/serbia), a Slavic country, and the mobilization systems and interlocking alliances of
the great powers undermined all attempts to avert a general war. The general disruption caused
by World War I (/history/modern-europe/wars-and-battles/world-war-i) contributed to the
revolutions in February and October 1917.

The Bolshevik Revolution enraged the British. Vladimir Lenin (/people/history/russian-soviet-

and-cis-history-biographies/vladimir-ilyich-lenin) and other communists called on the workers
in all countries to overthrow their capitalist oppressors and characterized the war as caused by
rivalries between capitalist and imperialist countries like Britain. Lenin withdrew Russia from the
war and signed a separate peace treaty with Germany (/places/germany-scandinavia-and-
central-europe/german-political-geography/germany) at Brest-Litovsk in 1918. In the
aftermath, Soviet support for national liberation movements in the empire, and of anti-British
sentiment and activity in the Middle East (/places/asia/middle-eastern-physical-
geography/middle-east), was a special source of annoyance to Britain. To avenge the Brest-
Litovsk treaty, and alarmed that the Germans might transfer troops to the Western Front, the
British, French, and Japanese intervened in Russia's Civil War (/history/ancient-greece-and-
rome/ancient-history-rome/civil-war), deploying troops to Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, and
Vladisvostok, and later funneling material and money to the White armies opposing the Red
Army. Winston Churchill (/people/history/british-and-irish-history-biographies/winston-
churchill) (minister of munitions in 1917) made no secret of his antipathy toward Bolshevism,
aiming to "strangle the infant in its crib."

Soviet policy toward Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was marked by contradictions. On the
one hand, Josef Stalin (/people/history/russian-soviet-and-cis-history-biographies/joseph-
vissarionovich-stalin) tried to expand his diplomatic and commercial contacts with this
archetypical imperialist power, as part of an effort to win recognition as a legitimate regime. On
the other hand, he and his colleagues in the Kremlin remained wary of an anti-Soviet capitalist
alliance and worked for the eventual demise of the capitalist system. Then, with the League of
Nations (/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/united-nations/league-
nations) weakened by the withdrawal of Japan and Germany, the Versailles Peace Treaty openly
flaunted by Adolf Hitler (/people/history/german-history-biographies/adolf-hitler)'s rearming of
Germany, and the world economy crashing in the Great Depression (/history/united-states-
and-canada/us-history/great-depression), Stalin began thinking of an alliance with Britain as
protection against Germany. When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (/people/history/british-
and-irish-history-biographies/neville-chamberlain) capitulated to Hitler at Munich
(/places/germany-scandinavia-and-central-europe/german-political-geography/munich) in
1938, Stalin decided to make a pact with the Nazis (/history/modern-europe/german-
history/nazi) and did so the following year. But on June 22, 1941, Hitler renounced the
nonaggression treaty and invaded the Soviet Union (/places/commonwealth-independent-
states-and-baltic-nations/cis-and-baltic-political-geography/union), thus precipitating the
Grand Alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union (/places/commonwealth-independent-states-
and-baltic-nations/cis-and-baltic-political-geography/soviet), and United States
(/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-geography/united-states). Churchill's cynical
words reveal his true feelings about Stalin and the Slavic country to the east: "If Hitler had
invaded Hell, I would find something nice to say about the Devil in the House of Commons
(/history/modern-europe/british-and-irish-history/house-commons)."

The USSR (/places/commonwealth-independent-states-and-baltic-nations/cis-and-baltic-

political-geography/union) lost twenty million lives and suffered incalculable destruction during
World War II (/history/modern-europe/wars-and-battles/world-war-ii). The conflict ended in
the total defeat of the Axis powers, with the Red Army occupying Albania (/places/spain-
portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/albanian-political-geography/albania), Czechoslovakia
(/history/modern-europe/czech-and-slovak-history/czechoslovakia), Poland
(/places/germany-scandinavia-and-central-europe/polish-political-geography/poland),
Yugoslavia (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/former-yugoslavian-political-
geography/yugoslavia), Bulgaria (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-balkans/bulgarian-
political-geography/bulgaria), Romania (/places/spain-portugal-italy-greece-and-
balkans/romanian-political-geography/romania), and Hungary. Relations between Britain and
the Soviet Union (/places/commonwealth-independent-states-and-baltic-nations/cis-and-
baltic-political-geography/soviet) chilled rapidly. Churchill warned of the hazards of growing
Soviet domination of Europe (/places/oceans-continents-and-polar-regions/oceans-and-
continents/europe) (a descending "iron curtain") in a historic March 5, 1946, speech at
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/missouri). The formation of two military alliances, NATO (/social-sciences-and-
law/political-science-and-government/international-organizations/nato) (1949) and the
Warsaw Pact (1955). solidified the Cold War (/history/united-states-and-canada/us-
history/cold-war), which lasted until 1989.

In the postwar era, the Soviet Union perceived Britain as an imperialist power in decline,
especially after it relinquished most of its colonies. Nevertheless, Britain remained an important
power in Soviet eyes because of its nuclear forces, its leadership of the British Commonwealth,
and its close ties with the United States (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/united-states). In general, however, Soviet relations with Britain took a back seat to
Soviet relations with France (especially during the presidency of Charles de Gaulle
(/people/history/french-history-biographies/charles-de-gaulle)) and West Germany (especially
during the administration of Willy Brandt (/people/history/german-history-biographies/willy-
brandt)). This may have been because Britain, unlike West Germany, was a united country and
thus not susceptible to Soviet political pressure exerted through the instrument of a divided
people, and because the British Communist Party (/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-
and-government/political-parties-and-movements/communist), because of its small size, had
less influence in electoral politics than the French Communist Party (/social-sciences-and-
law/political-science-and-government/political-parties-and-movements/communist). Given
 its close trade ties with the United States (/places/united-states-and-canada/us-political-
geography/united-states), Britain was less dependent economically than other West European
states on Soviet and East European trade and energy resources. Britain also fulfilled its
obligations as a NATO member, whereas France withdrew in 1966 from the military side of the
alliance.

Even after the collapse of communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe (/history/historians-
and-chronicles/historians-european/eastern-europe) in 1989 and the end of the Soviet Union in
December 1991, the Soviet-era division of Europe continued to influence Russia's foreign policy
toward Britain and other West European countries. Although the Warsaw Pact was disbanded,
Encyclopedia of Russian History GRANVILLE, JOHANNA
NATO extended its reach, admitting three former Soviet allies (Hungary, Poland, and the Czech

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Relations with Great Britain

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