that might be hard to arrange. The UK could cut those vital supplies to the US, like gunpowder, but could some other nation step in and fill the gap? If the UK wants the CSA to win without actually joining in, they might have to go so far as to cut off supplies and threaten other nations who might offer the same supplies... which is pretty provocative...
Were the British really smart when they avoided intervention in the American Civil War?
- Thread starter Femto
- Start date
It would be difficult to actually pull off a Confederate victory without overt British support, but it would be the most advantageous scenario for the British if it could happen.
I still don't understand how weakening a potential future ally is to their advantage. And considering that is the OP's question, not the feasibility argument we've spent so much time on, this premise demands more explicit examination.
no matter if the Brits actually join or don't but still embargo vital supplies... it's still going to be pretty obvious that the UK is backing the rebels. The real question is what happens after. I'm not sure the OP can really be answered, because there's no real way to predict what people back then will do. Everyone involved might just be surly for a generation or two, and then get on with their lives. The US might decide that the UK is a treacherous partner at best, and start building up a navy of it's own, determined to become a world power second to none (might not be achievable, but hey). The US might be hell bent on revenge, and spark another war when the UK is distracted somewhere else. For that matter, it's not certain what the UK will do either, with the US split and distracted...
As I recall, the other great powers generally took the UK's side in the Trent affair.
Also, Britain had fought large wars in this period (Crimea, the Indian Mutiny) without being ganged up on by other powers, so I don't think you can assume that it's going to happen here.
Was the US already seen as a potential ally in the 1860s?
The scenario I was thinking of is if the Confederacy is somehow able to win without a British embargo. I was thinking the French might get involved.
I think this view suffers too much from presentism to be honest. We see the 20th century through the lens of the Great War and all of its consequences, and many people look at the events from almost 1814-1914 as a continuous build up to that great calamity which lead to the other calamities of the 20th century. But let's look at things on the ground in 1860 from both a British and American perspective:
From the British perspective, the United States is a rising power who they have fought wars with or been on the brink of conflict with since its inception in 1775. Partially because of British intransigence, but also because both parties had overlapping goals which did not align with the others. To the British of the 1860s, the United States is gobbling its way across the continent, is sometimes loudly declaring its intention to take Canada by force, and is potentially destabilizing influence on Britain's world trade network. To make matters worse, they are sympathetic to Britain's major rival Russia.
In 1860, the British weren't really afraid of the United States (small navy, small army, ocean away) but they definitely saw them as a rival, not a future ally. The United States meanwhile, was at least aware it had things to be worried about from the maritime powers of Europe like France and Britain.
From the American perspective, Britain is still perfidious Albion, a symbol which politicians will wave as a bloody shirt to whip up the crowd (see William Seward or 34/40 or fight!) which still gets dunked on in popular media. They are also a major trade partner, but not seen as a trusted friend. They also remember things like the attempts of British politicos to enlist Americans for service in the Crimean War, the Oregon boundary dispute and the most recent but absolutely ridiculous abortive Pig War. They also object to British warships seizing and searching American vessels off the coasts of Africa who are suspected in engaging in the illegal slave trade. There were still many reasons for them not to trust the British politically, but numerous others for them just to not interest themselves in European affairs.
Neither country in 1860 would have looked favorably on the idea of an alliance. They both would have thought there was no reason for it, too many strings attached if it came, and it would run contrary to any idea of independent foreign action they might have.
In a situation where Britain did tick off the Americans in this fashion, the British might just sit in their bubble of splendid isolation if similar circumstances brought up an alt Great War. Their fleet will still probably be powerful enough that each alternate alliance would have to give pause before inviting it to join any other side, and their economy would still be one of the largest in the world. They could probably quite comfortably sit back and play kingmaker from a diplomatic and military position.
But is it not equally presentist to presume that the United States, however much faster it was growing than Britain in 1860, would ever reach, much less surpass Britain in power? Palmerston may have seen it that way, but he doesn't seem to have been in the majority on that. And if not, then it would remain a peripheral concern. And there's a catch-22 of sorts in here, where if the US is seen as a potential threat, it follows that antagonizing it would necessarily run the risk of backfiring. So you can't accept the threat of inaction without also acknowledging the dangers of this course of action.
And honestly, if you see it as a potential threat, then it would logically also have the power to be a potential ally, at least on matters in the Western Hemisphere and possibly China. And it's easy to overstate the degree of actual antagonism between the two countries post-1812 and ignore their periods of cooperation.
Arguably just a bit yes.
However, it should be pointed out that British observers were aware of the depth the United States had, and the potential for economic expansion that provided. They did see the US had been gradually growing for the last 80 years, and many had invested in that growth (heck from my own reading the biggest worry economically about the Trent affair was that the lucrative railway investments in the US made by members of the upper class would be ruined by a potential war) to great returns. While from a nationalist perspective they would definitely believe Britain would keep growing, they were definitely aware that was the case for the US too.
It is correct to say that they could be a potential ally if they could be a potential rival. But British politicos at this time always looked at allies as allies of convenience. After the Crimean War where the British and French had fought side by side, Palmerston was scrutinizing everything the French did and seeing it as a precursor of an invasion of Britain or some other part of Europe, and many in Britain were also guided by that thought. I suppose it's more succinct to say that the British did not believe they had any perpetual allies or enemies, only their own perpetual interests. Some powers might clash with those more than others, but there was no reason those powers might not also be useful in certain circumstances.
But the response to the mindset Palmerston described wasn't to try and destroy all potential threats precisely because they could be useful later. This isn't something they attempted in the 19th Century against anyone they deemed remotely close to a peer society. So this course commits too heavily to the idea of the US as a permanent enemy. Bringing up the OTL 20th Century may be presentist, but it also tells us just how wrong that notion would be.
I think we're misunderstanding each others points. I don't mean the British would try to destroy the US or it is in their interest to do so. For instance if they did intervene in the war it would be because they felt at that moment their interests were threatened. I also don't believe that had they gone to war they would have made the explicit independence of the CSA a war goal, they really just wanted to force the US to the negotiating table from the one war scare historically.
The independence of the CSA would probably incidental to British intervention, not a direct goal of British intervention.
That may be true, but I've been trying to focus specifically on what I thought the OP was asking. And I'll admit I forgot about their request not to bring up Germany...but their justification for not doing so wasn't a rejection of presentism so much as an assessment that Germany didn't present the same threat to Britain, so I do think that presentism is baked into this particular discussion by necessity. So while it's true that a British intervention would almost certainly happen for reasons other than those the OP presents, their premise is still flawed even by the logic they're using.
Are you asking from my present viewpoint or from the viewpoint of folks in 1861?
Agreed. And by any yardstick, the long term outcome of an intervention probably isn't going to be a good one.
No to both. The present viewpoint shows that the US was far more of an asset than a liability to Britain in the future, and the 1861 viewpoint would generally respect the basic integrity even of rival states like France or Russia, because doing otherwise would commit Britain to indefinite hostilities even if the effort itself didn't backfire somehow.
From the present viewpoint, of course they made the right call. The rise of the United States cost the UK very little and gave them a great deal in return with the USA as an ally. The USA was a friendly power in North America meaning that Canada, the Caribbean and British financial interests were guarded (in the long run, of course. In 1861 American 'protection' of anything was a joke). The USA was a reliable trading partner and a formidable political/military ally in both World Wars. Sure, in the end America helped unravel the British Empire but that would have happened (sooner and more violently) without the USA as an ally.
We don't know that for sure. British foreign policy without a benign America would be incredibly different and there's no guarantee Britain involves itself in major wars if there's even a remote chance America acts differently. Britain might have sat on its hands and repaed the economic rewards of a major European war and been the global capital of finance. They might have been better ble to bind Canada, Australia and New Zealand to her without the war to shatter their confidence in Britain.
History Learner
Banned
They shut down the powder supply of the Union for about a month during the Trent Crisis. The biggest source of Nitrates at the time is India, followed by Chile, with the latter being a British ally and home of the a Pacific squadron of the Royal Navy.