British neutrality versus offshore balancing in the American civil war: The english school strikes back

Security Studies

Volumn 16, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 68-95

  Little, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34247868223     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: 15561852     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410701304564     Document Type: Article

References (163)

1. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 41.
2. Although the two books view regions from very different perspectives, see, for example, Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Power: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);
3. Peter J. Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). For critiques of Mearsheimer's "stopping power of water thesis,"
4. see Katzenstein's discussion in A World of Regions, 8
5. Glenn H. Snyder, "Mearsheimer's World: Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security," International Security 27, no. 1 (Summer 2002): 149-73
6. Peter Gowan, "A Calculus of Power," New Left Review 16 (July/August 2002): 47-67
7. and Richard Rosecrance, "War and Peace" World Politics 55 (2002): 137-66.
8. This position is vigorously contested in Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006). Although Layne believes the United States should be following a policy of offshore balancing, he argues that domestic factors have been pushing the country to pursue a strategy of global hegemony for nearly seventy years.
9. Mearsheimer's optimistic assumption is that the United States is taking time to work out the strategic implications of the Soviet Union's collapse. His pessimistic assumption is that the United States is ignoring the implications of realist theory; but, in fact, realists are now deeply divided about the role of the balance of power in international politics. The debate about whether or not the structure of the international system will eventually push states to balance against the United States is extensive and evolving. The latest phase in this debate is between proponents and opponents of soft balancing. See, for example, the competing positions advanced by Robert A. Pape, "Soft Balancing Against the United States," International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 7-45
10. Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, "Hard Times for Soft Balancing," International Security 30, no. 1 (Summer 2005): 72-108.
11. For an extension of the discussion beyond the boundaries of the modern international system, see, for example, Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little, and William C. Wohlforth, eds., The Balance of Power in World History (London: Palgrave, 2007)
12. Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1-2.
13. For his discussion of underbalancing, see Schweller, Unanswered Threats, 10.
14. So, for example, both war and the balance of power are treated as central institutions in Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2002).
15. The pluralistic nature of English School thinking is ignored in assessments provided in Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999);
16. and Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
17. The founding text of neorealism is Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
18. For a discussion of its enduring influence, see Michael P. Sullivan,"' That Dog Won't Hunt': The Cottage Industry of Realist Criticism, or Must You Play that Old Waltz Again?" Journal of International Relations and Development 8 (2005): 327-54. For the argument that classical realism as represented by Morgenthau anticipated much English School thinking,
19. see Richard Little, "The English School vs. American Realism: A Meeting of Minds or divided by a Common Language," Review of International Studies 29, no. 3 (2003): 443-60, reproduced in part in Hans
20. J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005): 601-7.
21. Mearsheimer is, in fact, very vague about what he means by a region, and the "stopping power of water thesis" is more effective in terms of distinguishing between the Western and Eurasian Hemispheres. This is the focus adopted in this article.
22. See Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, chap. 7
23. Christopher Layne, "From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing: America's Future Grand Strategy," International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 86-124.
24. Mearsheimer's account of the ruthless way in which the United States expanded has been commended from some otherwise unlikely quarters. See the thoughtful review by Gowan, "A Calculus of Power."
25. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 251.
26. Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, 1815-1908 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 96.
27. Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 489. He cites Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power; Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974 and 1980);
28. W.L. Morton, "British North America and a Continent in Dissolution, 1861-1871," History 47, no. 160 (1962): 139-56, in support of this position.
29. Colin Elman, "Extending Offensive Realism: The Louisiana Purchase and America's Rise to Regional Hegemony," American Political Science Review 98, no. 4 (2004): 563-76.
30. Elman elaborates these different positions on the basis of an explanatory typology. See also Colin Elman, "Explanatory Typologies in the Qualitative Study of International Politics," International Organization 59, no. 2 (2005): 293-326.
31. Elman, "Extending Offensive Realism," 567.
32. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society: English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 167.
33. Andrew Hurrell, "Foreward to the Third Edition: The Anarchical Society 25 Years On," in The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, by Hedley Bull, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2002), vii.
34. Bull, Anarchical Society, 117. For a detailed assessment of Bull's exposition of these institutions,
35. see Richard Little and John Williams, eds., The Anarchical Society in a Globalized World (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006).
36. Bull, Anarchical Society, 103.
37. See Erik Goldstein and B.J.C. McKercher, "Power and Stability in British Foreign Policy, 1865-1965," Diplomacy and Statecraft 14, no. 2 (2003): 1-22. Buzan argues that the undifferentiated application of the term"great power" to the major European states is symptomatic of a Eurocentric bias in the field of international relations. He distinguishes between regional European powers that operated within the region and European great powers that operated inside and outside Europe.
38. See Barry Buzan, The United States and the Great Powers: World Politics in the Twenty First Century (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), 48.
39. Bull, Anarchical Society, 4, 13.
40. For a fuller discussion of the link between Bull and Waltz, see Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths, and Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
41. See Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992), 311.
42. See Martin Wight, Systems of States (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977);
43. Herbert Butterfield, "The Balance of Power," in Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, ed. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966).
44. Realists might argue that the British presence in Canada meant the bifurcation of the United States was unnecessary to establish a balance of power in the Western Hemisphere. Moreover, providing assistance to the South could have endangered Canadian security. The British, however, did not think that Canada provided a counterbalance to the United States. On the contrary, by 1861, they effectively acknowledged a U.S. hegemonic status. From an English School perspective, therefore, it is necessary to move beyond a power political perspective in order to give an adequate account of the British response to the Civil War.
45. See Lindsay Moir, The Law of Internal Armed Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3.
46. Moir, Armed Conflict, 4-18.
47. See Elizabeth Chadwick, Traditional Neutrality Revisited: Law, Theory and Case Studies (Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2002), 2-4.
48. Rules relating to blockades became critical in the nineteenth century, for example, when it became possible for navies to establish effective blockades. See Stephen C. Neff, The Rights and Duties of Neutrals: A General History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 34.
49. Moir, Armed Conflict, 6-7.
50. Neff, Rights and Duties of Neutrals, 97-99.
51. Chadwick, Traditional Neutrality Revisited, 30-31. Privateers were privately owned vessels, authorized by letters of marque, or license, issued by a government in time of war, to prey on enemy shipping or seize goods from another nation's ships. Privateering was a practice that enabled the state to expand its naval capacity very quickly.
52. This line of argument has much in common with Jackson's study of quasi states. See Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The image of international society as an egg box was formulated by Hidemi Suganami and John Vincent.
53. See R.J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 123-25, 173.
54. Quincy Wright, "The American Civil War," in The International Law of Civil War, ed. Richard A. Falk (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1971), 30-109, esp. 81.
55. Jackson provides the most detailed discussion of the methodological implications of the English School approach. See Robert H. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
56. Andrew Hurrell, "International Society and the Study of International Regimes," in Regime Theory in International Relations, ed. Volker Rittberger (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 49-72, esp. 64.
57. The case study draws heavily on primary sources, although it also relies on a number of secondary sources that are based on archival research. The standard text is E.D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, 1925). There has been, however, a range of texts in more recent years.
58. See Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970);
59. D.P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers: 1861-1865 (New York: John Wiley, 1974);
60. Charles Hubbard, The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998);
61. Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols.; Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992);
62. Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2000). However, there is still no comprehensive account of the international dimensions of the Civil War. Wright's "The American Civil War" continues to provide one of the most detailed discussions of the Civil War from an international law perspective.
63. Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 1: 74.
64. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 4-9.
65. See Duncan Andrew Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War, Royal Historical Society Series (Woodbridge and Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2003), chap. 1. Campbell surveys the areas of friction between Britain and the United States during the decade before the Civil War.
66. See James H. Hutson, John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1980), 13-14.
67. Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, rev. ed. (London: Longmans, 1955), 76.
68. Charles Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 342. Merk argues that Guizot did not use the French equivalent of a balance of power in America (équilibre américain) and that Polk's hostile reference to the balance of power was another attempt by an American president to warn Europeans not to intervene in North America.
69. See Frederick Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism: 1843-1849 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), chap. 3.
70. Lord Palmerston, cited in Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers 3.
71. See also Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 1: 75. Jenkins suggests that "forbearance and concessions were the perpetual price of friendship with the United States."
72. Palmerston to Newcastle, 11.7.1861, Palmerston Papers, British Library, London, 48582 (hereafter cited as Palmerston Papers).
73. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 285.
74. Adams, Great Britain, 1: 53.
75. A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 3 vols. (London: Murray, 1907), 3: 538.
76. At that time, foreign envoys were identified as ministers rather than ambassadors.
77. Lyons to Russell, 3.30.1861, Foreign Office correspondence, National Archives, Kew, FO/5/754 (hereafter cited as catalog reference number).
78. Russell to Lyons, 4.20.1861, FO/5/754.
79. Lyons to Russell, 6.10.1861, cited in T.W.L. Newton, Life of Lord Lyons, 2 vols. (London: E. Arnold, 1913), 2: 37.
80. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 374. The Russian minister to London noted at the start of 1861 that Britain "desires the separation of North America into two republics, which will watch each other jealously and counterbalance each other."
81. Mahin, One War at a Time, 24.
82. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 34-35.
83. Mahin, One War at a Time, 7.
84. Lyons to Russell, 4.22.1861, FO/5/762.
85. Lyons to Russell, 5.20.1861, FO/5/764.
86. Palmerston to Russell, 5.24.1861, Palmerston Papers.
87. Russell to Lyons, 5.2.1861, FO/5/754.
88. Palmerston to Russell, 10.18.1861, Russell Papers, National Archives, Kew, 30/22/14B (hereafter cited as reference code).
89. Russell to Lyons, 2.15.1859, FO/5/708.
90. Russell to Lyons, 1.5.1861, FO/5/374.
91. Admiralty to Admiral Milne, 12.12.1860, cited in J.P. Baxter,"The British Government and Neutral Rights," American Historical Review 34 (1928): 9-29, 10.
92. Russell to Lyons, 4.12.1861, FO/5/820.
93. Russell to Lyons, 5.6.1861, FO/5/754.
94. Russell to Lyons, cited in Adams, Great Britain, 1: 58.
95. Lyons to Russell, 4.9.1861, cited in C.F. Adams, "The British Proclamation of May 1861," Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 49 (1915): 221-27, 224.
96. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 50.
97. Lyons to Russell, 4.12.1861, cited in Adams, "The British Proclamation," 224.
98. The economic consequences of the blockade have long been debated. For a recent and detailed economic assessment, see David Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001), 209. Surdam concludes that"for the resources expended, the blockade appears to have been a worthwhile investment."
99. Mahin, One War at a Time, 45-46.
100. See Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 77. Crook argues that Russell rightly ignored the suggested deal that was"impractical and poor law."
101. Russell to Lyons, 5.4.1861, cited in Adams, Great Britain, 1: 86.
102. Case and Spencer, United States and France, chap. 2, provide a full account of the French moves.
103. Russell to Lyons, 5.21.1861, FO/5/754.
104. Russell to Lyons, 6.21.1861, FO/5/754. For George Canning's use of this phrase, see H.W.V. Temperley, The Foreign Policy of Canning: 1822-1827 (London: Cass, 1966), 326.
105. J.W. Foster, A Century of Diplomacy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), 367.
106. Mahin, One War at a Time, 13.
107. Adams to Russell, 5.18.1861, cited in H.W. Temple, W.H. Seward (New York: Knopf, 1923), 53.
108. Russell to Lyons, 4.20.1861, FO/5/754.
109. Lyons to Russell, 6.10.1861, cited in Newton, Lord Lyons, 1: 37.
110. Ibid., 1: 45. At this stage, the British, but not the French, had issued a proclamation of neutrality. 86 For the account in detail, see Case and Spencer, United States and France, 70-71, 590. They argue that Seward wanted to pursue an "averted glance" strategy: "He would not react to the Anglo-French recognition of Southern belligerency if the two powers did not tell him of it officially and if they did nothing to raise the issue."
111. R.J.M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 168.
112. See Alfred Grant, The American Civil War and the British Press (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998);
113. Blackett, Divided Hearts
114. Campbell, English Public Opinion.
115. J. Morley, Life of William Ewart Gladstone, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1904), 2:70-73.
116. R. Read, Cobden and Bright: A Victorian Political Partnership (London: Edward Arnold, 1967), 220.
117. As Gladstone said later, "Lord Palmerston desired the severance as a diminution of a dangerous power, but prudently held his tongue." Morley, Gladstone, 535.
118. See also W.D. Jones, "The British Conservatives and the American Civil War," American Historical Review 58 (1953): 527-43.
119. See Campbell, English Public Opinion.
120. G.E. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 6 vols. (London: Murray, 1920), 4: 332.
121. Russell, cited in Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government, Parliamentary Debates 3rd Series, 1829-1885 (London: Baldwin and Cradock), 163: 631.
122. Palmerston to Newcastle, 11.7.1861, Palmerston Papers.
123. For accounts of the discussion surrounding the possibility of mediation, see Case and Spencer, United States and France, chap. 9
124. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, chap. 8
125. Mahin, One War at a Time, chap. 9.
126. S. Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Green, 1889), 2: 344.
127. Lord Palmerston, 6.30.1862, Parliamentary Debates, 167: 1214.
128. William Forster, 7.18.1862, Parliamentary Debates, 168: 537.
129. Palmerston to Russell, 9.14.1862, 30/22/14D.
130. Russell to Palmerston, 9.17.1862, 30/22/14D.
131. Palmerston to Russell, 9.30.1862, 30/22/14D.
132. Palmerston to Russell, 9.22.1862, 30/22/14D.
133. Palmerston to Russell, 10.8.1862, 30/22/14D.
134. Palmerston to Russell, 10.2.1862, 30/22/14D.
135. Palmerston to Russell, 10.21.1862, 30/22/14D.
136. Palmerston to Russell, 11.2.1862, 30/22/14D.
137. Russell to Lewis, 10.26.1862, 30/22/14D.
138. Adams, Great Britain, 405.
139. Palmerston to Russell, 10.21.1862, 30/22/14D.
140. Lyons to Russell, 2.2.1863, FO/5/876.
141. Seward, 7.1.1861, cited in Case and Spencer, United States and France 74.
142. For a very full account of the French role, see Case and Spencer, United States and France, chap.
143. See also, Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, chap. 5
144. Mahin, One War at a Time, chap. 5. As a result of the crisis, 17,000 British regulars were added to the existing forces in Canada.
145. The British had in the past regularly boarded neutral ships. See Case and Spencer, United States and France, chap. 6
146. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, chap. 5, for comprehensive discussion of the legal consequences of the Trent incident.
147. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 374.
148. For a discussion of the Lieber Code, see Wright, "The American Civil War."
149. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 259.
150. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 261, 295. Crook also notes that it is often forgotten that the United States had earlier refused to concert with the British to clarify the law.
151. Ibid., chap. 10
152. Mahin, One War at a Time, epilogue 2.
153. Case and Spencer, The United States and France i, 590. Their analysis unquestionably undermines Elman's (2004) hypothesis that continental states have an interest in extra-regional balancing. It suggests that all the continental great powers had an interest in the establishment of a counterweight to British naval power. This would certainly explain the predisposition on the part of the Russians to favor the North.
154. See Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 252-53, 285-86, 317-18.
155. As Crook notes, "The long-term problem for Britain must have seemed not how to exploit American weakness, but how best to face up to the international results of the rebellion's inevitable success." Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 375.
156. Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 615.
157. See Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Krasner argues that international norms and institutions are non-consequential and that the frequent references to norms by decision makers is simply a product of "organized hypocrisy."
158. Wright, "The American Civil War," 81.
159. John Bassett Moore, History and Digest of the International Arbitrarions to which the United States Has Been a Party, 6 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1898), 1: 497.
160. William C. Wohlforth, "The Stability of a Unipolar World," International Security 24, no. 1 (1999): 5-41, 39.
161. Wohlforth argues that we should see the first half of the century as a Pax Britannica et Russica from 1853 to 1871, there were no dominant powers; then from 1871, it was a Pax Britannica et Germanica
162. Crook concludes, for example, that the Union was fortunate that the "the civil war coincided with the first major revision of the European power balance which had lasted since the Napoleonic wars. "See Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 372.
163. See also J. Kutolowski, "The Effects of the Polish Insurrection of 1863 on American Civil War Diplomacy," Historian 27, no. 4 (1965).