TheGreat Rapprochement was the convergence of diplomatic, political, military, and economic objectives of theUnited States andGreat Britain from 1895 to 1915, the two decades before American entry intoWorld War I as an ally againstGermany. In theVenezuelan crisis of 1895 PresidentGrover Cleveland, aDemocrat, escalated a boundary dispute in South America into a confrontation with Britain. Relations were calmed under PresidentWilliam McKinley (1897–1901).Theodore Roosevelt, theRepublican president from 1901 to 1909, played a central role through his close contacts with British intellectuals and politicians and in his diplomatic work regarding thePanama Canal in 1901 and theAlaska boundary dispute of 1903. From 1914 to 1917, he was the leading proponent of America entering into the war on the side of Great Britain.[1][2]
The convergence was noted by statesmen and scholars of the time, but the term "Great Rapprochement" may have been coined by American historianBradford Perkins in his 1968 study of the periodThe Great Rapprochement: England and the United States 1895–1914. Perkins attributes the convergence togrowing imperial ambitions in the United States, British withdrawal from the Western Hemisphere tofocus on preservation of its African colonies andnaval threat from the German Empire, andrapid industrialization and integration into the Britishglobal financial system by the United States.
American sentiment towards Britain was harshly negative for much of the 19th century.[3] Enmity between the two nations, largely driven from the American side, peaked during theAmerican Civil War and theTrent affair. After 1872 and the settlement of theAlabama claims, direct hostility declined. However, other incidents, such as theMurchison letter and disputes over borders and fishing rights between the U.S. and Canada (then adominion of theBritish Empire), stoked continued American hostility toward the British. A large segment of the American public considered Britain their "natural enemy", though many Americans acknowledged closer cultural and political affinity with Britain than with those ofContinental Europe.[4]
The fundamental socioeconomic distinctions between the agrarian andisolationist United States and theindustrialized British Empire rapidly diminished after 1865. The United States emerged from the Civil War as a major industrial power with a renewed commitment to a stronger federal government as opposed to one ruled by individual states, permitting engagement in imperial expansion and economic globalization. The post-warReconstruction era therefore generated or expanded Anglo-American geopolitical and commercial networks.[5][6]
In 1895, former United States ambassador to VenezuelaWilliam Lindsay Scruggs, working as a lobbyist for the Venezuelan government, publishedBritish Aggressions in Venezuela: TheMonroe Doctrine on Trial, claiming that Britain sought to expand their territorial claim inBritish Guiana to incorporate theOrinoco River watershed.[7]Congress, led by aRepublican majority under SenatorHenry Cabot Lodge, called for a vigorous American enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. PresidentGrover Cleveland and Secretary of StateRichard Olney acquiesced, adopting theOlney interpretation of the Doctrine and asserting American authority to arbitrate all boundary disputes in theWestern Hemisphere.[7] Cleveland's acquiescence may also have been influenced by hisDemocratic Party's reliance on Irish-American voters.[8]
Guided bySecretary of State for the ColoniesJoseph Chamberlain, the British cabinet ofLord Salisbury rejected both the applicability and legal validity of the Monroe doctrine and asserted that Britain remained an imperial power in the Americas. Cleveland responded in kind, establishing an investigatory commission to determine the true boundary and publicly stating that his administration would use "every means in its power" to prevent British expansion into Venezuelan territory.[7]
Partly due to the influence of business interests, who feared war between the powers, tensions were defused. TheBritish cabinet agreed to approach the Americans diplomatically, and Great Britain and Venezuela signed an arbitration agreement in 1896.[7] In 1899, the arbitration committee ultimately awarded Britain ninety percent of the disputed territory. The resolution of the crisis through arbitration (rather than war) and its establishment of the United States' free hand in the Americas served to ease British-American tensions.
The British acquiescence to negotiation and arbitration in the Venezuelan crisis may have been influenced by a desire to avoid negotiation withWilliam Jennings Bryan, aleading candidate for President of the United States in 1896.[9]
American currency policy was a dominant domestic issue throughout the 19th century with an international tinge. Generally speaking, banking interests, which were then heavily centered inLondon, favored a deflationarygold standard while agrarian and mining interests favored an inflationarybimetallist or outrightfree silver policy to reduce or erase nominal debts.[10] Thesoundness of the American dollar also had implications for access to international trade, which was dominated by the gold-backed Britishpound sterling andGerman mark. Many American manufacturing interests therefore called for "sound currency," meaning either acceptance of the international gold standard or bimetallism contingent uponinternational agreement.
Populist William Jennings Bryan won the 1896Democratic Party nomination for president on a platform explicitly opposed to the sound currency argument. Near the conclusion of his famousCross of Gold speech, Bryan directly accused Britain of interference in American economic sovereignty and framed outright bimetallism without international approval as a nationalist alternative:
It is the issue of1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage todeclare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they saybimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that,instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend thegold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost.
Other Bryanite populists includingJohn Peter Altgeld,William Hope Harvey, andMary Elizabeth Lease echoed this theme in their speeches, alarming British opinion.[10] However, Bryan lost the election toWilliam McKinley, paving the way for fourteen years of unanimous Republican government. Soon after, theKlondike Gold Rush, a final failed international conference, andthe legal adoption of a pure American gold standard in 1900 effectively ended the currency issue, thereby securing British loans in the United States and putting the two countries on the same terms of trade. The resolution of the currency issue thus also served to realign Republican Party opinion in favor of the British at the turn of the century, paving the way for rapprochement under successive Republican presidents.[10]
While the period was dominated by theRepublican Party in the United States, British government was split between theConservative Party (1895–1905) and theLiberal Party (1905–16). The Republican Party became noticeably warmer toward Britain during the period, while the shift from Conservative to Liberal government favored the United States in London.
British Foreign Secretaries
British ambassadors to the United States
| United States Secretaries of State
United States ambassadors to the Court of St. James
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Shortly after the arbitration agreement in the Venezuela crisis, Secretary Olney and Ambassador Pauncefote reached an agreement to settle all further disputes between the United States and Great Britain via arbitration. The treaty was approved by President Cleveland during hislame duck session and submitted to Congress with support from many academics and peace advocates, but was rejected resoundingly by theUnited States Senate.
In the early stages of the Spanish–American War of 1898, the common belief in the United States, fueled by AmbassadorJohn Hay and Liberal pressmen likeW. T. Stead, was that the British public took the side of theCuban revolutionaries against Spanish colonial rule. Attitudes within theSalisbury ministry, however, were cooler.[11][12] Conservative disposition opposed anti-colonial revolution as a rule and Britain had previously favoredSpanish control over Cuba to protect stable trade in theCaribbean. The exception among the cabinet was Chamberlain (aLiberal Unionist rather than Conservative), who now gave speeches in support of American intervention and privately suggested an outright alliance to Hay.[12]
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However, publication of theDe Lôme Letter (wherein the Spanish Ambassador suggested that Great Britain desired war with the United States) outraged the Salisbury government, and after the sinking of theUSSMaine, AmbassadorJulian Pauncefote rushed to express British sympathies to the Americans.[12] Most European powers remained aloof from the conflict, fearing American retaliation, but publicly urged peace. The Salisbury ministry, by contrast, secretly sought McKinley's personal approval before urging peace and went so far as to expedite the sale of two cruisers to the United States as part of its mobilization effort.[a] At Hay's suggestion, SenatorHenry Cabot Lodge introduced a reciprocal conciliatory measure to pay Britain a long-withheld arbitration award.[12] Over Pauncefote's objection and with Chamberlain's support,Arthur Balfour (acting as Foreign Secretary in his uncle Salisbury's absence) instructed a policy of strict non-interference.[12] This ardent permissiveness toward American action set Britain apart from other European powers and was particularly decisive in the easy American victory, in light of British naval supremacy.[13]
At times, formal permissiveness crossed into material or moral support. During the 90-day war, Britain sold coal to theUnited States Navy and allowed theUnited States military to use Britain'ssubmarine communications cables.[14][15] When CommodoreGeorge Dewey's fleet sailed out ofHong Kong harbor forManila at the onset of war, the British soldiers and sailors in the harbor openly cheered for them.[16]
Observing the war in the final months before his death,Otto von Bismarck remarked that the most significant event of the 20th century would be "the fact that the North Americans speak English."[17]
The United States emerged from the war as an imperial power with possessions around the globe, and a special interest in the approaches to what in 1914 became thePanama Canal. At the same time, the British Empire was coming under increasing pressure from the growth of theGerman Empire's economy and navy, and it was cutting back on potential conflicts on its periphery to focus on the rising threat across theNorth Sea.[18]
Washington refused to give support to theBoers during theSecond Boer War.[19]
By 1901, many influential Britons advocated for a closer relationship between the two countries.W. T. Stead even proposed that year inThe Americanization of the World for both to merge to unify theEnglish-speaking world, as doing so would help Britain "continue for all time to be an integral part of the greatest of all World-Powers, supreme on sea and unassailable on land, permanently delivered from all fear of hostile attack, and capable of wielding irresistible influence in all parts of this planet." The Scottish-born AmericanAndrew Carnegie shared the goal by telling Stead, "We are heading straight to the Re-United States."[20] As AmericanAnglophobia declined, London realized the value of a long-term ally that would prevent an upset in Britain'sbalance of power, which Germany andRussia appeared to threaten. The US seemed to understand and to some extent agree with British imperial aspirations, if not always with the methods used in their pursuit.
As part of the process of imperial retrenchment, Britain resolved aborder conflict between Canada and Alaska, withdrew its objections to an American-controlled canal in theHay–Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, and agreed in 1902 to arbitrate a debt collectiondispute with Venezuela.
After a final British flirtation with Germany's anti-American designs during the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–03, Britain and the United States embraced unreservedly during theTheodore Roosevelt administration (1901–1909).[citation needed]
In addition to geopolitical alignment brought about by the American turn toward empire, the United States and Great Britain resolved long-held trade disputes during the period.
Britain's adoption ofJohn Hay'sOpen Door Policy towardChina garnered much goodwill on the western side of the Atlantic and further accelerated the pace of rapprochement after 1900.
The Atlantic Maritimes played an important role in furthering reconciliation on the eve of the Great Rapprochement. The 1890 appointment of Massachusetts Republican and fishing magnate Isaac C. Hall, a key figure in developing conceptions of "provincial reciprocity," as U.S. Consul to Prince Edward Island spurred Conservative calls for "Dominion reciprocity." The revived idea of "provincial reciprocity," distinguished from "Dominion reciprocity" byHarrison Administration construction of Article 33 in the 1871Treaty of Washington, contributed to debates in the31st General Assembly of Prince Edward Island.[21] These conflicts began with U.S. Senate Republicans' 1885 abrogation of fishery articles in the Treaty of Washington, U.S. Senate Republicans' rejection of the 1888 Bayard-Chamberlain Treaty (after passage of the Retaliation Act), and the1888 U.S. presidential election.[22]Neil McLeod, Leader of the Opposition, held that any proposal for "provincial reciprocity" would pressure the "Dominion Government to go on their marrow bones to the American Republic and ask them for better trade relations...it would show the Americans that we were in some dire distress, and without some assistance from them in the shape of trade relations, we were at their mercy. I think that when an important case, such as the question of trade relations with the United States is pending, the local Legislature should remain quiet, and let the Dominion Government carry the burden."[23] McLeod also presaged his own proposed amendments to Liberal "reciprocity" trade resolutions--"we hope the negotiations will result in establishing the freest trade relations between the countries, consistent with the exigencies of the Dominion and our relations with Great Britain"—with his interpretations of lulls in "amalgamation" deliberations: "formerly our Liberal friends advocated doing away with the Legislative Council, but they do not advocate that now in this House. It would not be pleasing to some of their friends in the other branch of the Legislature."[24] Alterations to Liberal "reciprocity" resolutions proved more divisive within Conservative ranks than narratives of the origins of "amalgamation." Although nine Conservative delegates (in addition to McLeod) voted for his amendments, three joined the Liberal bloc in defeating the proposed revisions.[25]
In Prince Edward Island, Conservative challenges against "provincial reciprocity" did not preclude Conservative advocacy for U.S. trade treaties by "Dominion reciprocity" with "provincial" support. For example, when a Liberal delegate accused Conservatives of attempting to "press upon the Dominion Government to get a treaty with the United States,"Neil McLeod countered that "when the Dominion Government want[s] to undertake some great measure, such as a treaty with the United States, he [the Liberal delegate] knows that instead of being weakened by the assistance of Local Parliaments, they will be strengthened by that assistance. I do not mean to say that we ought to raise any factious difficulties or anything of that kind, but we should in any and every way show the Dominion Government that when they have a reallybona-fide measure to propose, we are in unison with them."[26] Conservative appraisals of "provincial reciprocity" as a question of legislative sovereignty, rather than solely international commerce and political economy, became crucial for fictional and nonfictional narratives of Anglo-American reunion as well as burgeoning New Englandtourism in the Atlantic Maritimes.[27]
InThe Moon Maid, American writerEdgar Rice Burroughs envisioned a future in which the US and Britain would form a close military alliance and in a decades-long war defeat and subdue all other nations, uniting the world under their joint rule—with Washington, D.C., and London serving as joint planetary capitals and the US President and British Monarch being the joint Heads of State of this World State.[citation needed]
The poemThe White Man's Burden byRudyard Kipling was written to encourage reconciliation between Great Britain and the United States in the name of cooperative civilizing imperialism.[28]