 Welcome to everybody tonight. We're very privileged to have with us tonight Kathleen Burke, Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London. Professor Burke has had a distinguished career as an international historian with large numbers of books and articles. I know I, as a historian, have used them very often in my own work and my teaching. These have included books such as British and American, America and the Sinus of War, 1914 to 1918, Old World, New World, the story of Britain and America, also Morgan Grenfell, a biography of a merchant bank, and Troublemaker, the life and history of A.J.P. Taylor. Born in California, she was educated at Berkeley and Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Research Fellow and a student of A.J.P. Taylor. Professor Burke was co-founder of the historian's press in 1983 and founding editor in 1989 of Contemporary European History. Being raised in California, she gained a love and appreciation of wine, and this is something that was news to me, which led to a second career as a writer on wines and a connoisseur of wines as well. Her 2009 book, This Bottle Corked, A Secret Life of Wine, was shortlisted for a prestigious international prize for the best wine book of the year. Tonight, of course, she's going to be here to discuss her research of her latest book, The Lion and the Eagle, The Interaction of the British and American Empires, 1783 to 1972, and I look very forward to hear what she has to say about that. Thank you. Well, I'm quite privileged to be here tonight. I knew Saki, who was not only a distinguished, very distinguished historian, but quite fun, in fact. So I feel particularly honored to be here in her honor. Now, about 10 years ago, I published a rather large book on Anglo-American relations from the beginning called, as Bob said, Old World, New World, which was 830 pages long. It garnered some very acceptable reviews, but it was one in the Times Literary Supplement, which bemused me a bit. The reviewer was very nice, but he then pointed out that I had missed an important strand, that of the two empires. My first reaction was a silent question to the reviewer, essentially just how long a book did you want to read. My second reaction was that I was sick of Anglo-American relations and went off to write my book on wine. But the question of the empires began to nag my brain a bit, and I gradually accepted that he was right. I had looked at the trajectory of the power relationship between the United States and Great Britain, but regionally, and this had largely focused on Europe with a glance at Latin America. What if I looked at the empires? My eyes and attention were drawn to the peripheries where the two empires met, was their conflict, was their cooperation. Looking at the globe during this period, what was the story? How did the United States and Great Britain as imperial powers fit? I like reading and writing about great powers. I like negotiations and conflict. I like grand strategy. And this relationship in this context during this period seemed to meet all of these criteria. So I set to work. The first question I had to confront was, what is an empire? I began with the point that throughout most of recorded human history, empires have been the normal way of organizing people so that they can be governed or controlled. This has been the case down to very modern times. And indeed, in 1914, there were 16 empires. Empires have come in different shapes, sizes, structures, and powers. A brief and basic definition is that it is a state which rules over or has overwhelming influence over without incorporating territories outside of its original borders. It might be a land-based empire such as that of Austria and then Austria-Hungary before 1918 or a seaborne empire like the British Empire. It might be thought that the imperial power must be large, but by no criterion could the Netherlands or Belgium or Denmark be considered large. It must be able to require the subordinate territory to do what it might not otherwise wish to do. Empires can grow by conquest, the normal means, or by dynastic marriages. But they can also grow by purchase, as with the Louisiana Purchase, Alaska, and the Danish Virgin Islands by the United States. Empire can be formal, but it can also be informal, which implies economic domination or great military influence without full political control, as with most of the 20th century American empire. Very few of these points are without controversy, since historians and commentators differ widely and indeed sometimes ferociously over what an empire is and which country is one. I was not looking to write a history of the British and American empires neither jointly nor individually. Rather, I wanted to look at what happened when they interacted, particularly out on the edges where the two empires met. The two empires had much in common, but also much which differentiated between them. Both were dominated by whites. Both eventually were democracies. Both supported private enterprise. Both insisted that they were bringing the blessings of civilization and good government to those who suffered by their lack. Both justified the use of force as a way of providing these blessings, and in this context, they shared a healthy self-righteousness. There were also distinct differences. The British had a seaborne empire, whilst for most of its existence, the American empire was land-based. Most important of all, the British empire was a colonial empire, whilst the United States, once it had conquered from sea to shining sea and gone through its Philippines phase, was much less a colonial empire than the semi-controller of a range of client states. I'm gonna regret that one, water. In the 19th century, the British dominated a large informal empire as well as its formal, whilst the Americans had to wait until the 20th century for theirs. The British took to extended periods of life abroad and enjoyed exercising political control over colonial territories. The Americans, on the other hand, have always seen abroad as much less desirable than home. Economic interests in particular often brought them into conflict, although not normally of a military nature. But partly because of the similarities and in spite of the differences, the two empires often worked together. It does seem to me that it is impossible to understand the modern world without understanding the imperial relationship between the two English-speaking empires. Empires always worry about their borders. One concerned is restlessness or turmoil across the border which might threaten their own territories and which encourages them to expand, to control the neighboring territories to eliminate this threat. This was the case for Great Britain and India. When, for example, she tried to control Persia and Afghanistan in order to deter Russian expansion southwards. And for the United States in her continental expansion when she tried to conquer or eliminate successive Indian tribes. The other threat is a challenge by a rival state or empire. This had been the case for the British Empire in the 19th century, as she played the great game with the Russian Empire over the control of Central Asia and with the British and American empires in North America. It was the case for the American Empire in the post-1945 period when the US wanted to contain the Russian Empire's residual legality, the Soviet Union, within its recognized borders. In this task, the US expected the full cooperation of Great Britain and what was left of her empire. And you'll excuse me for a second, please. Returning to the 18th century, the 1783 Treaty of Paris gave birth to the fourth empire to share the North American continent, the United States of America. The French, Spanish and British empires were already in situ. The French Empire disappeared from North America with the sale of Louisiana to the US in 1803, a purchase which by a few strokes of the pen doubled the size of the American Empire. That territory of Spain and Florida was taken over in 1819 and that of Spain's successor in North America, Mexico, by 1850. That left only the British. The two empires shared two common desires in North America, to expand and deny expansion to the other. During the period from 1783 and 1815, war between Great Britain and the United States was repeatedly threatened and from 1812 to 1815 actually took place. Over the remainder of the century, a significant number of conflicts took place. Who could forget the Lumberjack War of 1839 between Maine and New Brunswick, the threats of war over the Oregon Territory or the Pig War of 1859. Indeed, during the 19th century, Americans invaded Canada a dozen times. The main issue was the Canadian-American boundary and the fact that no one knew where it was. A secure border was vital to the security and well-being of both countries. But first it was necessary to have correct and detailed maps, not least because quite small pieces of territory or the control of the one fording place of a river or of a good harbor can make the difference between a defensible border and one which is open to invaders, whether agricultural, commercial or military. Theoretically, the border between the United States and what remained of British North America was set out in the Treaty of Paris of 1783. And indeed it was set out in some detail, such as quote, from the Northwest Angle of Nova Scotia, vis that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north from the source of the St. Croix River to the Highlands, unquote. Unfortunately, amidst all of the vital, if possibly tedious detail, two elements were missing. First of all, no one could say for certain where these lines ran because the topography was wholly unclear. Which river was the St. Croix? There were three candidates and where was in or on or by the Highlands? No one knew. And secondly, there was no map appended to the treaty which might have made things considerably clearer. Imagine the whole territory for 25 miles on both sides of the current border from the extreme east coast to the western side of the westernmost great lake, Lake Superior, as thickly covered with spruce forests and watered by unknown streams and for miles of which there was no agreed border between the country and the colony and the possibilities conflict becomes obvious. Add to the pot the great lakes with, for example, the entry from the St. Lawrence River into Lake Ontario containing what was referred to as the Thousand Islands, all of which had to be mapped. It was crucial that the borders north or south or in the middle of the lakes be mapped and borders determined because they provided invasion routes from both sides. This meant in short that it was all to play for and over the next several decades, crises rose all along the border. A crucial point is that neither could defeat the other. Great Britain was a sea power but the US had no rivers on the east coast that were available for an invasion because the Appalachian Mountains were in the way and what the British could do was to blockade and torch cities up and down the coast. They could possibly sail up the Mississippi River but then how to invade the eastern states, even more mountains in the way. In short, they could damage but not defeat. A weak spot for the Americans was Canada. Certainly the British could invade from Canada but then one has to remember the length of the transatlantic supply lines. The US was a land power. Yes, there was a US Navy but it was tiny compared to the Royal Navy. As was demonstrated in the War of 1812, a British blockade along this eastern seaboard could entirely pen in the Americans. So how to deal with the border if fighting was not going to work? The answer was negotiations. Five mixed commissions, meaning members from both sides were set up to determine where it was with commissioners and agents and surveyors from both sides. Excuse me. They set out to go into the archives and the wilderness to locate the points as set out in the 1783 treaty. For those such as myself who enjoy crawling along a map, all of this, I find it, all these disputes and the commissions provide plenty of opportunity but consider what had to be done. As one example, to sort out the identity of the above mentioned St. Croix River required European archivists to locate any relevant historic documents and maps, teams of surveyors to explore Passamaquoddy Bay and the adjoining territory, taking many notes including astronomical notes and drawing detailed maps, men taking scores of depositions and sworn testimony from witnesses and copyists preparing multiple copies of the evidence and arguments which were then circulated amongst commissioners, agents and officials of the State Department and Foreign Office. After all this, the commissioners had to read and digest the material, make the decision and submit it along with the maps this time to the respective governments. If governments accepted the decisions and this was not always the case, it was time for the men in the field as quote from a diary of the time guided by magnetic readings on their compasses, compasses, surveyors had organized parties of chainment to run the boundary through spruce forests and cedar swamps inscribing the landscape with monuments, witness trees and other conspicuous boundary marks. And then there were the ferocious winters, the swamp fevers around parts of the Great Lakes, the local denizens who did not agree with the boundary as defined, multiply this by the thousands of miles which required attention and the enterprise was clearly heroic. Only in 1903, when the decision was made over a part of the last Canadian border was the whole line of the border agreed. What is notable was that it was not fought over as such, rather it was negotiated over and when that failed on occasion, there was arbitration. The whole exercise was an innovation. Let us turn from the area where the two empires were in conflict to the region where they were more inclined to cooperate and this was in the Far East. The two primary countries here were China and Japan. In China, the British led and the Americans trotted behind. Conversely, in Japan, the Americans led and the British followed, but only for a few years and then the Americans again trotted behind. The crucial difference, of course, was the relative military power. The Royal Navy on the China Station and soldiers of the British Indian Army were only nine steaming hours away from Japan. Whilst for some years, hardly one American ship a year visited Japan. Not least because there was a civil war on the way. At dawn on the 14th, September 1793, Lord McCartney was introduced to the Chinese emperor, Qin Lun. He was in Peking as the representative of King George III whose government wanted to establish diplomatic relations and to improve and expand commercial relations. McCartney wore his robes of the order of the bath over a suit of spotted mulberry velvet. The wonders of the British export trade were displayed. A planetarium, optical and magnetic instruments, Irish poplums, Birmingham metalware and Wedgwood dishes. The embassy was received with polite condescension and the following day taken through a succession of pavilions filled with far superior products and then briskly dismissed. McCartney recorded in his journal that, quote, our presence must shrink from the comparison and hide their diminished heads. The emperor began his edict to be carried back by McCartney, quote, we by the grace of heaven emperor instruct the king of England to take note of our charge. He then commended the British monarch for his sincere humility and obedience, but pointed out that the celestial empire had not the slightest need of your country's manufacturers. Finally, he rejected the request for the relaxation of restrictions on trade between China and Great Britain and the appointment of a permanent ambassador. Yet, within half a century, for the Chinese, the world had turned upside down. Great Britain, by means of the opium war, smashed down the gate. British empire in China was an informal empire, not an empire of rule. China retained nominal independence whilst succumbing to foreign influence, which was ultimately based, of course, on the threat or actual use of military force. This, in its turn, could enable preponderant influence in or the acquisition of strategically vital territories. Force also supported the use of diplomatic pressure or the imposition of key advisors in important areas of government, such as the head of the department responsible for the collection of taxes. This structure of influence normally resulted in commercial agreements favorable to the dominant power, what a surprise. In due course, this was the case with Great Britain. Behind her increasingly strong financial and commercial position in China, always lurked a threat of force, of so-called gunboat diplomacy, provided by the Royal Navy. It was to be naval power of an uncompromising type backed by the land power of the army that destroyed the restrictions, which had shackled British trade and opened up China to the barbarians. In short, Great Britain enjoyed commercial power without much political responsibility. The foreign barbarians, however, included the other great powers, and by the 1890s, Great Britain found that she had to defend her position in China from these powers, especially Russia, France, and soon Germany, most of whom did want to impose an empire of rule, as well as from the Chinese themselves. In this situation, Great Britain looked to the other commercially-driven empire, which was trying to establish trading relations with China, and which did not want to overtake, take over territory, the United States. In 1785, the first American ship had landed in Canton, and the US early on established her decades-long position in China as competitor and sidekick of Great Britain, following closely behind and insisting on any privileges and rights which Great Britain had obtained for herself. There were various terms for this, piggyback diplomacy, jackal diplomacy, hitchhiking diplomacy, used both then and by later historians, and she depended on the power of Great Britain, who possessed the naval power in the Far East that the US lacked. The US government during the 19th century was even more concerned than was Great Britain not to become involved in Chinese politics or the acquisition of territory. Rather, she wanted to be free to trade and to spread the Christian gospel. She instructed her diplomats on the spot to work closely with and support the British, but not to count on governmental help. In short, the American empire did not exist in China, but she relentlessly collected imperial pickings. Great Britain was the predominant imperial power in China from the early 1800s until the 1890s. Great power imperialism was so rampant by then that in 1890 a new word, imperialism, entered the Oxford English Dictionary. British predominance was increasingly challenged and she looked to the US for support, and yet all of the men on the spot were often willing, the American government refused to become involved. There were three exceptions to this. One was the so-called American Open Door Notes of 1898. The second was American military involvement in the ferocity of the Boxer Rebellion and its bloody suppression in 1900. And the third was the US government's attempts from 1909 to 1913 to use financial diplomacy and pressure to penetrate the power's spheres of influence. Otherwise, Great Britain had to use her own power and influence to hold her position against French, Russian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, and Japanese trading and military incursions. The Chinese government took for real American claims that they were the only friends of the Chinese because they did not want any territory, although they wobbled on this now and again. Yet the Americans left them down every time. They tended to have contempt for the Chinese and preferred to stand with the British. Much of this came to an end with the First World War. Three of the participants ceased to be empires, one ceased to be a state at all, and the Chinese, by mean of two revolutions, began to take matters more firmly into their own hands. 10 years after Great Britain kicked in the Chinese door, the US decided to make their own move to open up Japan. In 1851, President Millard Fillmore asked Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the US Navy to lead an expedition to open up trade relations and to gain Japanese agreement, not to hunt down and imprison or kill American sailors washed up on their shores after shipwrecks. Furthermore, they wanted a cold depot on one of the islands. Japan was seen as a stop on the route to China and also as a port for a future steamship line across the Pacific from San Francisco. One wonders what the response to the Americans would have been to a Japanese request for a cold depot on, say, the coast of California. Fillmore knew that Perry shared his keen wish to expand American trade and to advance the nation's prestige. They also had a larger conception of the expedition. This would be the opening move of a struggle with Great Britain for eventual control of the Pacific. Consequently, on the 8th of July, 1853, Perry began the forced opening of Japan to the outside world by steaming defiantly into the Bay of Yido, later Tokyo, with a fleet of four very large ships, two of them black-hulled coal-fired steamships, the burning ships to the Panic Strik in Japanese, each of them carrying 61 guns and together nearly 1,000 men. He was carrying a letter from the president to the Japanese emperor, requesting that Japan open her borders to the Americans, the Japanese stalled, and Perry left, warning that he would return the following year with many more ships. The Japanese fortified the harbor, but this failed to prevent the arrival of the Americans in February 1854 with a considerably larger force. Perry had been instructed by the U.S. State Department to quote, to do everything to impress the Japanese with a just sense of the power and greatness of the U.S. Consequently, he brought with him huge quantities of champagne and vintage Kentucky bourbon to lubricate the wheels of diplomacy and a pair of Colt six-shooters and a scale model train to display U.S. technological achievements. He employed Chinese Cooleys and tall African Americans to show the command of white over color and he used uniforms and pageants as manifestations of American cultural supremacy. It is probable that American power rather than American culture convinced the Japanese to deal with Perry. The British, on the other hand, were primarily interested in opening up Japan to trade. They came to China from the West and already controlled a number of Coaling stations. Their merchants, Red and Tooth and Claw, wanted to expand from China into Japan. Considering imperialism as a policy, the British government had little or no interest in establishing either political control or spheres of interest in Japan. Although this did not preclude some future British officials in Japan from treating the Japanese as a lesser breed. The British government was quite happy for the Americans to take the lead. As Foreign Secretary Lord Malmsbury made clear in July, 1852, when commenting on rumors of Perry's forthcoming expedition, quote, "'Her Majesty's government would be glad to see the trade with Japan open, but they think it better to leave to the government of the United States to make the experiment. And if that experiment is successful, Her Majesty's government can take advantage of that success." And this, of course, is exactly what happened. The arrival of the U.S. and Great Britain in Japan in the late 1850s coincided with the beginning of the turmoil, which led to the major restoration of 1868. It was essentially a conflict over which clans should wield power, those connected to the Shogun, for several centuries the center of political power, or those gathering around the Emperor Mikado, for even more centuries, the center of spiritual power. Those backing the emperor wanted him to take back political power as well. Those clans connected to the Shogun tended to back the admission of the foreigners into Japan, primarily with the intention of learning science, technology, and military science, and then throwing the foreigners out. Those backing the emperor wanted to fight the foreigners straight away. The foreigners were caught in the middle. By 1868, those backing the emperor won, hence the major restoration. They too decided to exploit the knowledge and resources of the West in order to modernize quickly. During this period, Great Britain very much took the lead amongst all of the Western powers and the American diplomats, lacking the same level of military and naval resources, received their instructions from Washington to support the British and virtually everything they wanted to do. The assumption in both London and Washington was that they shared the wish to focus on trade and not to carve up the country or even to establish fears of interest, unlike Russia and Japan, for example, no Russia and Germany, sorry. They also admired Japan, which was modernizing in a way that China seemed wholly unable to do. The crucial point of policy was were the powers to release Japan eventually from their own unequal treaties and treat her as a full and independent member of the family of nations. The Americans wished to do so, but were prevented from doing so by the British, particularly by a strong and stubborn British minister in Japan who needed to die first. Re-adjustment and recognition finally took place in 1894, by which time Great Britain was beginning to moot an alliance with Japan, which was, of course, her first peace time alliance since the 1422 treaty with Portugal. Japan soon exercised its growing power by taking over Korea in 1905, and we know how things developed thereafter. Meanwhile, with the Spanish-American War of 1898 and her conquest of the Philippines, the US established her own Far Eastern Empire, fully supported by Great Britain. The latter hoped that the US would share responsibility in the Far East for maintaining open trade and the territorial status quo. But this had to wait until Pearl Harbor for the US to become fully involved. During the Second World War, President Franklin Roosevelt more than once urged the British to dismember their empire. He felt at liberty to make jibes, and Hong Kong was repeatedly the focus of his attention. His plan was to return the colony to the Chinese, providing that they agreed to designate it a free port. In January 1945, Roosevelt nudged the British colonial secretary, Oliver Stanley, and said that, quote, I do not want to be unkind or rude to the British, but in 1841, when you acquired Hong Kong, you did not acquire it by purchase. Stanley snapped back, let me see, Mr. President, that was about the time of the Mexican war, wasn't it? Given its habit of denigrating the British empire, it is something of an irony that just when the United States began greatly to appreciate its strategic value, it began to fall apart. For the Americans, this was an ideological consummation devoutly to be wished, but it came in an inconvenient moment, given the rise of the Soviet and then Chinese threats. Be careful what you wish for. The 20th century saw the decline and fall of the British empire as the supreme global power, and the rise of the American empire to the same pinnacle. It was an unprecedented and even curious dance. Great powers sometimes fight each other, and sometimes ally with each other, but seldom does one invite the other to assume such a position. Naturally, Great Britain did not invite the US to assume a superior position. Rather, she wished to co-opt American power to be exercised with a touch of British guidance, in defense of British and sometimes American interests. By the Second World War, she needed American power desperately in defense of her existence as an independent country. After the war, the need to co-opt remained. For her part, the US government recognized that the two powers had sometimes to work together as during the First World War, but she was determined to walk her own furrow and not to be guided by the British. During the interwar period, she had held back as far as possible from involvement in overseas affairs. The American Central America was not overseas. But by the Second World War, she had no choice. The war ended with the US, the supreme global power, and the UK in many respects, her subordinate. Yet the British empire and the American empire still had a last generation of interaction. It was brought to an end by the Americans inflicting the final blow. The First World War and the Versailles Conference saw Great Britain expand her empire in the Middle East. Because of oil and the importance of the Suez Canal and retaining her links with her empire, the region remained of huge importance. When in December 1947, the UK decided to focus her forces. There were three pillars. The defense of the home islands was the absolute priority, of course. But the other two were her sea communications to the US and the Dominions and the Middle East. For its part, the US saw the territories of the British empire as of great strategic value and vital to US security. And a significant amount of martial aid was directed to support the British in maintaining their overseas positions. The US also agreed with Great Britain on the supreme importance of the latter's maintaining her influence and even control over the Middle East, seeing this area as a British imperial responsibility. But as American and British interests diverged, the Americans grew increasingly dissatisfied with British intentions and actions. And the defining blow came with the Suez Crisis in 1956. Thereafter, the UK during the late 1950s and the 1960s rapidly withdrew from her imperial row in Africa as colony after colony received as independence. The US did not seriously object. Where the US did object and object violently was the British withdrawal from her bases east of Suez, which included Aden, Qatar and most importantly Singapore. Beginning in 1968, by 1972, the process was virtually complete with Hong Kong, Antigua, Brunei, the Falklands, Granada, Gibraltar, two sovereign bases on Cyprus and the islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Caribbean, the only territorial possessions of any note remaining. Why did the US object? First of all, she did not want to be the only white great power in the Far East. But secondly and more importantly, the loss of British bases and therefore responsibility in these areas caused at least a temporary rent in the American network against the expansion of the USSR and its influence. The post-war imperial role of the US was to lead and greatly finance the containment of the Soviet Empire within its own borders, much as Great Britain had done in the 19th century, as she sought to contain the expansion of the Russian Empire through Central Asia and down to India as well as in China. The American destruction of the British Empire damaged the latter's ability to act as a junior partner of the US. By 1972, it seemed that the US was, as she had wished earlier in the century, the cat who walked by itself. It was the end of an era. Great Britain, which had been a global and imperial power for over three centuries, was now primarily a regional power. For many, it was extremely difficult. One cabinet minister at the time, Richard Crossman, refers in his diary to, quote, breaking through the status barrier, and it's terribly painful when it happens. This signaled for some years the decline in a close Anglo-American relationship. Countries and empires ally because each has something to contribute to the relationship, but now it seemed that Great Britain had relatively little. Thanks partly to the attacks on the empire by the Americans over the decades, when Great Britain finally resigned the last territories of her empire, the US lost the geographically strategic fortresses and outposts, which the British had contributed to the alliance. The British economy was weak, and it was nearly self-destruct in the following few years. Great Britain was not unimportant to the Americans, given the NATO intelligence and nuclear links, but in a world which had recently held three empires, there were now only two, and neither was the British Empire. In the words of Seller and Yakeman in 1066 and all that, America was truly top nation, and history came to a full stop. But not, of course, for long. Thank you very much.