Common Purposes: Memory and the Development of the Anglo-American Special Relationship

Although it has come to represent one of the most important alliances of the twentieth century, the Special Relationship of Great Britain and the United States developed only through the concerted efforts of elites on either side of the Atlantic to create a shared identity.  Traditionally enemies in the nineteenth century, with new pressures both at home and abroad, these two imperial powers began to identify each other as natural allies.  The foreign relations between these two societies have been extensively researched.  Instead, this paper will investigate the creation of an Anglo-American identity through the shared ownership of history beginning at the end of the nineteenth century.

            Anglo-American identity started by emphasizing a shared past, but it expanded to owning the past.  This paper will focus on the preservation of Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral home of the Washington family in the early twentieth century.  The house was preserved through a joint effort by elite British and Americans citizens and opened to the public in 1921.  Along with the house, perservationists also created an institute to promote Anglo-American comity.  This paper will also briefly examine similar sites such as Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and other moments of shared history such as joint archaeological expeditions in the Middle East.  In constructing a shared identity based on race, culture and ownership of history, Anglo-American elites laid the groundwork for a political and military alliance.