Anglo-Saxonism And British Reactions To The Rise Of America(1895-1905)

At the turn of20th century, the Anglo-American relations are a rare case in the international relations, where two countries realized the peaceful power transition successfully. Thus, so far, this history has becoming a hot topic among the researchers at home and abroad. In order to explain why Britain made concession to the rise of America, this paper chooses the history of the Great Rapprochement between Britain and America from1895to1905as the subject of my study and discusses the reasons for British conceding in terms of Anglo-Saxon identity construction, attempting to prove that Anglo-Saxonism is related to the British attitudes towards and reactions to the rise of America. Four chapters to be discussed as follows:Chapter one discusses the relationship between Britain and America before the Great Rapprochement from1775-1895. Looking back on the whole history since the independence of the United States, the Anglo-Saxon relations take on the basic tendency from conflict to cooperation before the Great Rapprochement.According to the chronological and spatial order, chapter two describes the history of Anglo-Saxon relations from1895to1905in detail. And this part pays more attention to discussing the British reactions to the rise of America on the part of the Britain.In the third chapter, we focus on discussing the influence of Anglo-Saxonism on the British foreign policy, first of all, the writer comes up with the new concept——Anglo-Saxonism, so as to explain why Britain made concession to America. As a kind of idealism, Anglo-Saxonism derives from the racialism, which is made good use of by imperial countries to carry out their colonial polices in a so-called legitimate form. Finally, taking the above analyses into consideration, the forth chapter decides to corporate the Anglo-Saxonism into the specific history, that’s to say the period of the Great Rapprochement, trying to demonstrate that the discourse about Anglo-Saxonism is fit to the British diplomatic practice during the Great Rapprochement. At last, we can come to the conclusion that Anglo-Saxonism indeed has a profound effect on the policy-making of Britain.