“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world … Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.”
On April 19th, 1775, shots were exchanged at Lexington and Concord, beginning America’s war for independence from Great Britain. The following year, the thirteen American colonies declared their independence from the mother country in 1776, with the British recognition of this independence coming some years later in 1783. The United States would again fight against the British Empire, in the American “War of 1812” – which actually ended in 1815. Britain would again contemplate a war with the United States during the later American Civil War – although, fortunately, this was narrowly averted by the Abraham Lincoln administration. (More about that here.) Thus, relations between the United States and the British Empire have not always been so amicable. In both of these wars, we had been allied with France, even though we had also fought the intervening Quasi-War with the French on the high seas. Later on, America was allied with both the British and the French, during the First and Second World Wars. Which of these two nations, if any, is our greatest ally? This is the question that I will focus on today.
Battle of New Orleans, 1815 – the last major battle between the British and the Americans
FDR and Churchill aboard the HMS Prince of Wales – Atlantic Charter, 1941