From the Archdruid Reprt for April Apr 4, 2012
It really could have gone either way. In 1895, Britain and America very nearly ended up at war over the border between British Guiana and Venezuela. The Venezuelan government, at that time an ally of the United States, appealed to President Grover Cleveland to pressure Britain into arbitration; the Cleveland administration did exactly that, in belligerent language; British prime minister Lord Salisbury responded dismissively; public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic yelled for war. It took the sudden outbreak of a new crisis in South Africa—the Jameson Raid, one of the foreshocks of the Boer War—to provide enough of a distraction for passions to moderate and cooler heads to prevail.
Is he correct? If the war had happened, how would it have gone (remember, America was weaker and Britain stronger a dozen decades ago, and Canada was British).
It really could have gone either way. In 1895, Britain and America very nearly ended up at war over the border between British Guiana and Venezuela. The Venezuelan government, at that time an ally of the United States, appealed to President Grover Cleveland to pressure Britain into arbitration; the Cleveland administration did exactly that, in belligerent language; British prime minister Lord Salisbury responded dismissively; public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic yelled for war. It took the sudden outbreak of a new crisis in South Africa—the Jameson Raid, one of the foreshocks of the Boer War—to provide enough of a distraction for passions to moderate and cooler heads to prevail.
Is he correct? If the war had happened, how would it have gone (remember, America was weaker and Britain stronger a dozen decades ago, and Canada was British).