‘The Special Relationship’: How the British Reconquered the United States and Established an Anglo-American Empire

Cynthia Chung

“Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without … a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States…”

– Winston Churchill, ‘Iron Curtain Speech’, 1946

This will sound like an outrageous statement to many. How could the British have reconquered the United States?! They never won any war against her and by the 20th century had always fought alongside the United States as a trusted ally. And isn’t it rather the opposite, doesn’t the United States dictate British foreign policy at this point?

It is true, Britain never won a war against the United States, and it was understood by the mid-19th century that the British would never succeed in conquering the United States externally. Rather, if they were to be successful, she would need to be conquered from within, to which this paper is dedicated to telling the story of.

Two Opposing Systems

During the American Civil War, British support for the Confederate army had reached a point where Britain would have certainly militarily intervened on their behalf if it had not been for Tsar Alexander II deploying the Russian navy on both eastern and western coasts of America for seven months in support of Lincoln’s Union. Russia was prepared to go to war with Britain in order to keep the United States whole.

Tsar Alexander II explained in an interview with pro-industry American banker Wharton Barker on Aug. 17, 1879 why he thought it important that Russia should take such a strong stance in America’s Civil War (published in The Independent March 24, 1904):

“…All this I did because of love for my own dear Russia, rather than for love of the American Republic. I acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American Republic, with advanced industrial development were broken up and Great Britain should be left in control of most branches of modern industrial development.”

In other words, Tsar Alexander II understood that the United States had created the only economic system (known as “The American System”) that was capable of competing and defeating Britain’s slave-based economic policy of free trade. (For an overview of what is The American System refer here and here.)

In stark contrast to this sentiment, Lord Robert Cecil, who later became Marquess of Salisbury, a very prominent position in British peerage and who served three times as Prime Minister of Britain, had this to say in Parliament during the American Civil War:

“The Northern States of America never can be sure friends because we are rivals, rivals politically, rivals commercially…With the Southern States, the case is entirely reversed. The population are an agricultural people. They furnish the raw material of our industry, and they consume the products which we manufacture from it. With them, every interest must lead us to cultivate friendly relations, and when the war began they at once recurred to England as their natural ally.”

In other words, the cotton plantations that ran on slave labour in the American South, were in service of the British Empire’s global cotton trade which also ran on slave labour from India and conducted terrible exploitation of its British cotton workers.

The American Civil War was about two different economic systems in opposition to each other, and it was the South that was the “natural ally” to the British Empire.

However, the Union won the Civil War and the United States managed to keep itself whole. The South had to end its slave labour and the United States managed to push back on Britain’s slave-based economic policy (for more on this story refer here).

In fact, many leaders throughout the world, during this period were pushing back on Britain’s slave-based economic policy of free trade enforced by the British East-India Company. With leading opposition coming out of Germany, Russia, Japan and China, in addition to the United States.

In 1879, Otto von Bismarck broke Germany’s free trade system implementing an American style tariff policy for his nation. The kinship between Germany and the United States became so strong at this time that Otto von Bismarck’s speech in the parliament (1879) was quoted by McKinley on the floor in US Congress.

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Otto von Bismarck was heavily organising for the building of the Berlin to Baghdad railway, which after much resistance and delay would only be completed in 1940. If this has been accomplished during Otto von Bismarck’s life, the Middle East could have avoided the Sykes Picot carving up.

In 1869, Japanese modernizers working directly with the Lincoln-Carey strategists ran the Meiji Restoration which industrialized Japan.

In the 1880s and 90s, Lincoln-Carey Philadelphia industrialists were contracted for huge infrastructure and nation-building projects in China. Hawaiian Christian missionary Frank Damon, having participated in the Carey group’s strategies at a very high level, helped instigate, shape, and build the Sun Yat-sen organization that gave birth to modern China.

Sun Yat-sen referred to his admiration of Lincoln’s USA as the basis for a new multipolar system saying:

“The world has been greatly benefited by the development of America as an industrial and a commercial Nation. So a developed China with her four hundred millions of population, will be another New World in the economic sense. The nations which will take part in this development will reap immense advantages. Furthermore, international cooperation of this kind cannot but help to strengthen the Brotherhood of Man.”

It was crystal clear that the leadership of the world had embarked upon a common path and was desirous to enter a new age where slavery might truly become a thing of the past; that the individual was from henceforth to be seen as sacrosanct, that after centuries of brutal war the world was finally ready for peace and was willing to uphold liberty and freedom for all.

Was it just a dream?

No, it was not just a dream, although it was just as fleeting. The reason for this is found in the list of names below.

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Via https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-special-relationship-how-the