Twisting the Lion’s Tail: American Anglophobia Between the World Wars

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.