1921. America was preparing for Armageddon against the British. In the Congress, Great Britain was dubbed "a red pox spreading across the Pacific". There were calls for the United States to "seize maritime control of the world". " As war frenzy mounted, someone said, "We were Britain's colony once. She will be our colony before she is done." For the uninitiated, it may sound confounding, unbelievable. But this Anglophobia was a reality in the US between the two wars. The deadlock did break and "the cousins" embraced each other. And everything was hunky-dory.
The author may be an American professor, but there is nothing desultory, pedantic or academic about the book. In fact, the racy style -- somewhere between a Frederick Forsythe potboiler and a Tom Clancy political thriller -- is gripping, startling and thought-provoking, as John Moser makes a daring and almost impetuous foray into hitherto uncharted territory. He deals with facts (yes, they are hard facts) that people have shied away from talking about fifty years or thereabouts after the rabid anti-British feelings mellowed down.
Moser is ruthless as he rips apart the dichotomised American psyche of being morbidly obsessed with the need for an enemy. Without one, nationalistic fervour in the United States does not seem to stand on its own. This hypocrisy is more pronounced in the perennial necessity of having an enemy personifying downright nefariousness. From Mexico, Spain, Germany, Japan and China to Vietnam, the Soviet Union, Libya, Iran and Iraq, each country has served as the American punching bag. It all started with the anti-British repugnance that serves as the fodder, and not without good reason, for this disturbing piece of historical insight.
The sub-title "American Anglophobia between the World Wars" is a misnomer and a trifle misleading. The period covered by Moser extends a little beyond the Second World War, with references to the Marshall Plan and the events leading to the coming into being of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The author does not remain confined to times between the wars. He, in fact, goes ahead to use this timeframe as a lever to make his point during the years spilling over either side of the inter-war period, and does it with panache.
Moser talks about opportunistic hypocrisy in friendship. America took Britain apart when friends were not deemed necessary to have. But when enemies appeared on the horizon, it went all out to befriend the British. Given this backdrop, while this may have been true in the post-1947/48, the author fails to understand (and so do the readers too) why the United States went on a bash-the Brits spree when Nazism was on the rise in Germany and Hitler's vile intentions were more than apparent.
For once, history isn't so boring.
Book synopsis
In 1918 Anglophobia, a permanent fixture of the 19th-century American cultural landscape, made a significant reappearance in American political discourse. Anti-British invective, whether directed against the Empire, the monarchy, the aristocracy, or even Americans suspected of harbouring pro-British sympathies, would remain an important determinant of US foreign policy well into the 1940s. Attempting to root out the causes and consequences of this resurgent distrust of "perfidious Albion", this text sets out to show that 20th-century American Anglophobia went beyond the two factors which are usually cited by way of explanation: isolationist tendencies and the Anglophobia of recent immigrants to the USA. The author argues that an Anglophobia ran far deeper through American culture, steeped in the American national mythology, which continued to cast the British monarchy and Empire as antithetical to the ideals of liberty and equality. The book traces the trajectory of American Anglophobia up to the emerging Cold War - when only the global challenge of Stalin's Soviet Union could persuade many Americans that a long-term association with the United Kingdom was necessary, or even desirable.
