Walter Russell Mead: London Fourth
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
London is an odd place for an American to spend the Fourth of July, but the way the schedule worked out this summer, this happened to be the best time for me to make a quick trip. I’ve been putting some ideas together about Anglo-American relations, the decline and fall of great powers and the influence of religion, culture and intellectuals on foreign policy and political institutions. Those of you who stick with this blog will be reading about them going forward.
But for an American in London on the Fourth of July it’s hard to avoid reflecting on the break. History has a way of jumping out at you here; walking out of St. Paul’s after evensong today I passed under the baleful gaze of a heroic statue of Lord Cornwallis. But aside from the odd discordant note, the evidence of the special relationship between the United States and Britain is thick on the ground on what was an extraordinary and glorious Fourth here today — sunny and slightly cool, with fresh breezes gusting along the river and through the parks....
A short walk from the Churchill Museum is the modest townhouse on Craven Street where Benjamin Franklin lived from 1757 to 1775. Nobody believed in the special relationship more than Franklin; he was proud of his status as an Englishman, visited the town from which his father had emigrated to the colonies, considered repurchasing the old family estate, and in many ways seemed happier in London than in Philadelphia. He got to know Joseph Priestly the chemist and Unitarian theologian, formed a friendship with Adam Smith, and generally became a valued member of the enlightened and scientific elite in the leading city of the most advanced empire of its day. At least at the beginning, he was a patriotic and loyal English subject who only hoped to strengthen the British Empire. By the end of his tenure he was convinced that parting was inevitable; he would break off all relations with his own son when the younger man remained loyal to King George.
Part of what drove Franklin away was politics. He was always closer to the Whigs — and especially to William Pitt the elder, architect of Britain’s stunning victories over France in the Seven Years War and a constant friend to the American colonies. George III favored the Tories and wanted to turn the loose British Empire into a much tighter and more centralized state. The British Whigs didn’t like what that did at home or abroad: they argued that the Crown was regaining too much power from Parliament and were sympathetic to American arguments that the King was usurping the rights of the colonial assemblies....
In that sense, the forces that drove the American Revolution are still coursing through our politics now. While a significant number of Americans (usually relatively affluent and well educated) want a transformational government acting in the service of a coherent moral vision, larger numbers of Americans start getting nervous when they see too much movement in that direction....
Read entire article at American Interest (Blog)
London is an odd place for an American to spend the Fourth of July, but the way the schedule worked out this summer, this happened to be the best time for me to make a quick trip. I’ve been putting some ideas together about Anglo-American relations, the decline and fall of great powers and the influence of religion, culture and intellectuals on foreign policy and political institutions. Those of you who stick with this blog will be reading about them going forward.
But for an American in London on the Fourth of July it’s hard to avoid reflecting on the break. History has a way of jumping out at you here; walking out of St. Paul’s after evensong today I passed under the baleful gaze of a heroic statue of Lord Cornwallis. But aside from the odd discordant note, the evidence of the special relationship between the United States and Britain is thick on the ground on what was an extraordinary and glorious Fourth here today — sunny and slightly cool, with fresh breezes gusting along the river and through the parks....
A short walk from the Churchill Museum is the modest townhouse on Craven Street where Benjamin Franklin lived from 1757 to 1775. Nobody believed in the special relationship more than Franklin; he was proud of his status as an Englishman, visited the town from which his father had emigrated to the colonies, considered repurchasing the old family estate, and in many ways seemed happier in London than in Philadelphia. He got to know Joseph Priestly the chemist and Unitarian theologian, formed a friendship with Adam Smith, and generally became a valued member of the enlightened and scientific elite in the leading city of the most advanced empire of its day. At least at the beginning, he was a patriotic and loyal English subject who only hoped to strengthen the British Empire. By the end of his tenure he was convinced that parting was inevitable; he would break off all relations with his own son when the younger man remained loyal to King George.
Part of what drove Franklin away was politics. He was always closer to the Whigs — and especially to William Pitt the elder, architect of Britain’s stunning victories over France in the Seven Years War and a constant friend to the American colonies. George III favored the Tories and wanted to turn the loose British Empire into a much tighter and more centralized state. The British Whigs didn’t like what that did at home or abroad: they argued that the Crown was regaining too much power from Parliament and were sympathetic to American arguments that the King was usurping the rights of the colonial assemblies....
In that sense, the forces that drove the American Revolution are still coursing through our politics now. While a significant number of Americans (usually relatively affluent and well educated) want a transformational government acting in the service of a coherent moral vision, larger numbers of Americans start getting nervous when they see too much movement in that direction....