Yeah, this is extremely overstated
If the British stay mad at America then American development is severely retarded due to the loss of investment capital. However the down side for Britain is that America was a useful market for a lot of its goods for a long time.
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It is worth noting that large segments of the British politically active class were simply never that angered by the American War of Independence during the war let alone after it.
Yeah, this is extremely overstated. The US was quite capable of raising investment capital internally in the Nineteenth Century - as just one example, when the AT&SF issued $88 million in 4 percent bonds in 1896, 50 percent were sold on the NYSE, 30 percent in London, and 20 percent in Amsterdam.
In 1893, the total value of US railroad stocks sold in London was (depending on the source) 8-11 percent, and railroad stocks were (roughly) 28 percent of all foreign investment, and investment in British territories and (especially) Latin America made up the vast majority of that figure; only 9 percent were in US railroad securities, for example.
The actual numbers for British foreign investment (source year is 1913) were as follows:
45 percent (dominions/empire)
20 percent Latin America
20 percent US
15 percent in Europe.
As an example, US securities were 21 percent of purchases in the period 1886-1913; Argentine issues were 8 percent in 1870-1913, the same percentage as Australian in the same period. Canadian issues in the same period were almost 10 percent in the same period.
In terms of US investment vis a vis foreign, that varied significantly; during the immediate pre-revolutionary war period, "foreign" investment in the US (essentially British) is estimated at less than 5 percent of the aggregate physical wealth of the US, including foreign holdings of US debt.
Percentages ebbed and flowed, but by 1853, foreign investors (not just British) held 46 percent of US federal debt; much higher percentages of US state debts (58 percent) were held abroad, but the states could - and did - default and the European money still came. The payoffs were worth the gamble. The same year, about 26 percent of US railroad bonds were held abroad. Foreign investment peaked in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, for obvious reasons (there was money to be made) but these securities were widely held, all over Europe.
By the eve of WW I, some $7 billion in foreign investment was present in the US, while exactly half - $3.5 billion - in US investment was present overseas.
So, bottom line, investment - like trade - is a two-way street; no one invests when they don't expect to make more money, or with more security, then they would somewhere else.
Economic warfare against continental autarkies is a losing game.
Best,