Changing British Attitudes towards the United States in the 1880s

Abstract

On returning to England in 1900 after an absence of some thirty-two years, James Ford Rhodes was much surprised by a number of changes he observed, and more particularly by the novel attitude of a number of newspapers and journals which had previously reflected more traditional assumptions and beliefs. Radicals, from Paine and Cobbett, Bentham and the Mills to Cobden, Bright and the Manchester School had traditionally identified America as the precursor of the new millennium. In contrast to this radical tradition was a conservative counter-theme that insisted that within its revolutionary and republican origins lay the seeds of American self-destruction. All such convictions seemed confirmed by the civil war, andThe Timesunder Delane – the apogee of this conservative tradition – continued to prophesy the imminent collapse of the Union throughout most of the war. Yet in 1901 Rhodes noticed a far more sympathetic approach to American matters by the conservativeTimesandSpectator, and their formerly denigrating tone now echoed ironically in the pages of the radicalSpeaker. The purpose of this article is to try to explain some of the intellectual origins of this fundamental realignment, with reference to changing English interpretations of the American race, of the American revolution and of the American constitution, particularly as reflected in James Bryce'sAmerican Commonwealth, the classic exposition of this reinterpretation. This realignment was effected by a small body of academics, jurists and intellectuals whose writings in learned journals, legal textbooks and works of comparative politics lacked extensive appeal.

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