America’s grand anniversary: the rise of the Indispensable Nation - A midweek symposium

An “Impudent, False and Atrocious Proclamation”? British Responses to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

David Armitage (by Zoom)

Americans revere their Declaration of Independence but often forget it was also of great interest in Britain in 1776. This lecture tells the little known story of how the Declaration reached Britain in the summer of 1776 and what happened when it got there. Some supporters of the American cause cheered it; many recipients reviled it; and the British ministry wanted urgently to refute it. If the British had won, would we still remember the Declaration the same way today?

Truman and Eisenhower: Two Presidents who remade America

Nigel Bowles

Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the American Presidency, American politics, and America’s place in the world. Both contributed significantly to America’s modernisation. From unprivileged mid-western backgrounds, both men developed a clear sense of duty and public purpose. Intelligent, resilient under pressure, each acquired an acute feel for political power. Their contrasting experiences of life before the Presidency informed their different approaches to leadership of a political system that the Constitution’s framers designed to make governing difficult but possible.

1783–1945: the great shift in power between the Lion and the Eagle

Kathleen Burk

Over the period from 1783 to 1945 there was a total switch in the international positions of the US and the UK. In the 19th century the UK was economically and imperially the most powerful nation in the world. The US was dependent in many ways on the UK. It was tacitly protected by the Royal Navy; it was dependent on London for investment; and Britain constrained some of its more buoyant attempts at expansion into British territory, such as Canada. Americans looked to Great Britain for cultural links, too. But Americans resented what they saw as British contempt for their mores. The First World War was a turning point: the UK became much weaker. Indeed, Britain and the US in 1919 exchanged positions as the dominant international financial power. World War II made manifest the reality of the changed power dynamic.

The fear of (inter)dependence: The US and the world in the long aftermath of the 2008 crisis

Mario Del Pero

The United States must defend its “sovereignty without apology,” proclaimed Donald Trump’s first – and, to date, only – National Security Strategy in December 2017. The possibility of regaining this supposedly lost sovereignty has been at the heart of Trump’s rhetoric and political posture. But from nuclear deterrence to the circulation of commodities, from trade to investments, is it really possible – even for the world’s leading superpower – to escape the reality of global interdependence and the constraints it imposes on sovereignty, including that of the United States itself?

The American Century: hard power, soft power

David Ellwood

“The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in any nobility of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American Century...” famously wrote Henry Luce, founder of ‘Time’, ‘Life’ etc. in 1941, before the US had entered World War II. This talk will examine the rise and fall of this vision, exploring American designs for the postwar order: collective security, free trade, raising living standards “everywhere” and their implementation in the Marshall Plan; then the following decades of American missionary effort culminating in their high point, the 1990s era of globalisation. But it will also highlight the range of responses all this triggered, emphasising the fracture lines of sovereignty, identity and modernity that opened up in Europe – including Britain – more than any other part of the world.

Native Americans and the USA: from “merciless Indian Savages” to American citizens and Native Nations

Jacqueline Fear-Segal

The American Declaration of Independence doomed the Indigenous peoples of North America. The population of the new nation rapidly expanded westward, slowly but surely subjugating Native peoples. Designated as “merciless Indian Savages” in the Declaration, Indigenous populations constantly struggled to retain their own separate lands, cultures, and sovereignties. This talk will outline how Native peoples were progressively overwhelmed by America’s industrial power, military might, demographic growth, and confident ideology of “manifest destiny”. Yet, although dispossessed and confined to small reservation areas, the Indigenous populations were not eliminated. Today, there are 574 sovereign Native Nations spread across the United States, each maintaining distinct governments and traditions.

Look Back in Anger: The Emotional Evolution of the American Republic

Susan-Mary Grant

Former Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, famous for his part in uncovering the Watergate scandal, wrote three best-selling books during the first Trump administration: Fear (2018); Rage (2020); and Peril (2021). What can the field of emotional history tell us about America today? This talk tracks the important role that both fear and anger have played in the evolution of the Republic over the course of its 250 year history. It considers the fear that accompanied the Puritans on their ‘errand into the wilderness’ in the 17th century, through the anger of the Revolution that founded the nation, and that of the Civil War that almost tore it apart, to the fear and anger of the Red Scare and the McCarthy Years of the 1950s; echoes that resonate across America today.