Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the role of the American Civil War’s memory in shaping early twentieth-century Anglo-American relations. It argues that to overcome past animosities, Britons and Americans had to construct a new heritage of the Civil War together. The paper shows how this was ultimately achieved.

Paper long abstract:

Recent studies have shown that in the late nineteenth century, Anglo-American relations were on the safe road of rapprochement after being shaken during the American Civil War. However, scholars' focus on diplomacy and official networks has generated a partial picture of a complex and hardly unidirectional process of Anglo-American nearing.

This paper begins by showing that on a cultural level, the memory of Anglo-American relations during the war continued to undermine efforts to draw the countries closer together. Therefore, for transatlantic rapprochement to occur, those who advocated it needed to use cultural networks, exchange Civil War knowledge and offer Britons and Americans a new, conciliatory heritage of the conflict.

The paper then unearths this endeavour and shows how people on both sides of the Atlantic tried to re-shape the memory of the war in order to promote transatlantic nearing. Since the memory of the war penetrated all spheres of British and American lives - from politics to military thought to academe to popular culture - those who tried to promote rapprochement had to engage with accepted representations of the war in these spheres and by challenging them to advance a new heritage of the conflict. The paper illustrates how this was done in popular culture and politics.

The paper concludes by showing that by the early 1920s the heritage of the Civil War had been successfully altered. From a source of Anglo-American discord, the conflict achieved its place in British and American memory as a point of triumph for common Anglo-American values.