The Idea of America

Author(s):  
Lindsey Flewelling

The United States played a significant role in unionist political thought and rhetoric throughout the Home Rule era. Ulster unionists used American examples to emphasize the need to maintain unity between Great Britain and Ireland, and to provide historical justification for unionist actions. This chapter examines the ways in which the American Revolutionary War, Civil War, and Constitution were utilized in unionist rhetoric. Unionists drew upon these American historical and constitutional examples to highlight ethnic connections to the United States, underscore the failed obligations of the British government to fight to save the Union, and legitimize Ulster militancy.

Vulcan ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
Jesse A. Heitz

By the 1840’s the era of the wooden ship of the line was coming to a close. As early as the 1820’s and 1830’s, ships of war were outfitted with increasingly heavy guns. Naval guns such as the increasingly popular 68 pounder could quickly damage the best wooden hulled ships of the line. Yet, by the 1840’s, explosive shells were in use by the British, French, and Imperial Russian navies. It was the explosive shell that could with great ease, cripple a standard wooden hulled warship, this truth was exposed at the Battle of Sinope in 1853. For this reason, warships had to be armored. By 1856, Great Britain drafted a design for an armored corvette. In 1857, France began construction on the first ocean going ironclad, La Gloire, which was launched in 1859. This development quickly caused Great Britain to begin construction on HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince. By the time HMS Warrior was commissioned in 1861, the Royal Navy had decided that its entire battle fleet needed to be armored. While the British and the French naval arms race was intensifying, the United States was entering into its greatest crisis, the United States Civil War. After the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of the United States Navy remained loyal to the Union. The Confederacy, therefore, gained inspiration from the ironclads across the Atlantic, quickly obtaining its own ironclads. CSS Manassas was the first to enter service, but was eventually brought down by a hail of Union broadside fire. The CSS Virginia, however, made an impact. Meanwhile, the Union began stockpiling City Class ironclads and in 1862, the USS Monitor was completed. After the veritable stalemate between the CSS Virginia and USS Monitor, the Union utilized its superior production capabilities to mass produce ironclads and enter them into service in the Union Navy. As the Union began armoring its increasingly large navy, the world’s foremost naval power certainly took notice. Therefore, this paper will utilize British newspapers, government documents, Royal Naval Reviews, and various personal documents from the 1860’s in order to examine the British public and naval reaction to the Union buildup of ironclad warships.


2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (138) ◽  
pp. 220-237
Author(s):  
Marie Coleman

From its foundation in 1930 until the end of 1934 the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake sold the overwhelming majority of its tickets in Great Britain. Alarmed at the success of an enterprise that was illegal in its jurisdiction and that resulted in a considerable financial drain to the Irish Free State’s hospital service, the British government enacted a Betting and Lotteries Act in 1934 to curtail the sale of Irish sweepstake tickets there. The result was a substantial decline in British contributions to the sweepstake and in the overall income from ticket sales. The British action threatened the continued existence and success of the venture.


1956 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Finch

The founding fifty years ago of a society to promote the establishment of international relations on the basis of law and justice was a step marking the progress that had been made at the beginning of the century in the age-long efforts to find a means of substituting reason for force in the settlement of international controversies. At that time arbitration was generally regarded as the most suitable and acceptable substitute for war. Great Britain and the United States had both heavily contributed to that conviction first by submitting to arbitration under the Jay Treaty of 1794 the numerous misunderstandings that developed in carrying out the provisions of the Peace Treaty of 1783, and then three-quarters of a century later in submitting to arbitration by the Treaty of Washington of 1871 the dangerous Alabama Claims dispute following the American Civil War.


1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 774-780
Author(s):  
Arthur K. Kuhn

At the Antwerp meeting of the International Law Association in 1903, a paper was presented by Mr. Justice Phillimore indicating the desirability of having Great Britain participate in the Hague Conferences on Private International Law. At the same meeting, a resolution was adopted on the motion of Mr. Justice Kennedy to the effect that the Association “should take steps respectfully to lay before the British Government the points dealt with in that paper” with a view to its participation in the conferences. Although not referring in terms to America, the resolution was seconded by Dr. Gregory, an American member, and the discussion showed plainly that it was the sense of the meeting that the resolution was intended to apply also to the United States.


Author(s):  
Axel Körner

This book examines the extent to which the United States' political experience influenced the political thought and imagination of the Risorgimento during the period 1763–1865. Drawing on various source materials such as early Italian histories of the American Republic, parliamentary documents, memoirs, and correspondence, the book shows how abstract political ideas were reflected in Italy's wider cultural imagination from the end of the Seven Years' War in the early 1760s to the American Civil War a century later, which coincided with the Unification of Italy under the crown of Savoy. It argues that Italian ideas of the United States during the period of the Risorgimento were not blind admiration for American political experiments. Instead, Italians engaged with what they knew about the early Republic in relation to their own constitutional history, as well as to a whole range of different European experiences.


1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Thomas Morgan

Not only were the results of the British national election of last December momentous for the British people themselves, but it may be doubted whether any other election in the country's history ever excited as much interest in foreign lands. The United States was much concerned at the possibility of Great Britain erecting a tariff wall around not only the British Isles but the British Empire as well. The dominions were vitally interested. The whole of Europe awaited with increasing anxiety the decision of the British electorate, as upon it depended to some degree, at any rate, the next step of the British government in the settlement of the all-important problem of reparations upon which the reconstruction of Europe depended.


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