| At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States and Great Britain set aside generations of hostility and embarked upon a new era of cooperation, which brought lasting consequences. How this was achieved is this study's central concern.; The thesis analyzes an elite Anglo-American community rooted in shared values and a tradition of intellectual and economic exchange. Particularly, it probes how this community interacted through correspondence and, in the process, nurtured closer diplomatic relations. This study examines three sets of elite correspondences encompassing a diverse group of British and American leaders: writers Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson; jurists Sir Frederick Pollock and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; and statesmen Cecil Spring Rice and Theodore Roosevelt.; Additionally, other primary sources, such as, periodicals, diplomatic documents, as well as secondary sources, are employed in this study. Explaining the workings of this elite community illuminates the beginnings of the “special relationship” between two powerful English-speaking nations. |
