All roads lead to Rome? How America and Britain relate in the 21st century
We are though far closer to the Medieval than the Classical world - in a place of apocalyptic dread, frenzied self-doubt and a security riven by faltering contingencies.
“We… are Greeks in this American Empire…we must run the allied forces HQ as the Greeks ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.”
– Harold Macmillan, 1944
In 1945, as war ended and a tentative peace was augmented, Britain enjoyed a defining triumph. Its peoples from all dominions had fought under the same banner to defeat fascist Germany.
Within the euphoria, however, lay a sobering realization; that this would be the final act of global hegemony. The British Empire was over.
Its disintegration was assured by shifting economic power, nationalist confidence and the final conclusion of American ascendancy.
A new role for a subtler kind of authority beckoned.
To Tory mandarins like Macmillan, the Classical world offered profound consolations allowing a reconfiguring of strategic ambitions and celebration of a glorious heritage.
Seen from the grouse moor or the armchair of a members club, America was semi-barbarian, brash in its success and vulgar in its commercial pre-eminence. Such uncouth virility as it possessed was only a moderate guarantor of Western values; without the sage counsel of an older civilization, Armageddon was ever possible.
By pivoting to an Athenian position within an American empire, it was hoped the two most pressing concerns, financial stabilisation and colonial rearrangement, would be advantageously resolved.
Despite some initial successes, this assumption proved short sighted. Washington expected European economic integration as an adjunct of the Marshall plan which would weaken the Commonwealth.
Damaging to the image of cultivated excellence was the unmasking of Burgess and Maclean of the Cambridge spy ring. For many White House intelligence analysts, the British establishment seemed more like a Trojan horse than a Praetorian guard.
Finally, the Suez crisis of 1956 ended the dream of joint partnership in world governance when President Eisenhower dramatically prevented Britain and France entering Egypt to retake the canal. Any lingering imperial aspirations were destroyed.
By the time the Cold War had reached the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, nostalgia had given way to modernisation as the “white heat of technology” Prime Minister Wilson promised to transform the country. New prosperity and a dynamic pop culture dispelled the need for territorial stature, and American soft power through films and life style ideals became deeply prevalent.
The great hinge which transformed this landscape and set in motion our current order was the Arab oil crisis of 1973. As a punitive measure against supporters of Israel, a federation led by Saudi Arabia embargoed its export to the West, leading oil prices to rise by 300 per cent. Overnight the optimism of the 1960s dissipated, industrial strife loomed and capitalism seemed broken.
In response, America set about consolidating the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and Britain considered the possibilities of economic liberalism.
London was the conduit through which these new energies would revive the nation. Though it acted as a financial nexus throughout its history, the City had become comparatively stagnant by the middle of the 20th century, with limited international trade.
Culminating in the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986, a process of deregulation occurred which made the capital as powerful as New York or Hong Kong as a global commercial hub.
Coincident with the decline of heavy industry, England’s South-East became an enclave of mass wealth production and international business.
It wasn’t the city state of Athens that became analogous to the new order; it was the Venetian Republic.
Settled on the Adriatic lagoons in the wake of Rome’s collapse Venice became one of Europe’s dominant trading emporiums, its riches emerging from transnational trade and maritime supremacy.
Developing impressive colonies, at its zenith the city-state remained overwhelmingly mercantile, transmitting its rule from the epicentre.
London today has comparative traction, its interests aligned more with supranational forces than a domestic national agenda.
Outside, satellites in the Cotswolds radiate an exclusive urbanised version of country life, but beyond is a neglected hinterland apart from this great economic revolution.
Brexit was in large part an attempt to wrest the country away from this model, but its ultimate achievement may be to modify the form of globalisation, not to restore the nation-state.
In this rapidly fragmenting world, is America a modern-day Rome?
Perhaps its position bears more semblances to Byzantium, the Eastern part of the Empire that escaped the initial fall in the fifth century.
Centred around Constantinople, this great amalgam of territories defined the Christian world and Near East for centuries, but its challenges gradually mounted.
Internally, it became wrought with religious dispute – the existential fabric of its culture under acute threat.
On its borders, the embryonic Ottoman Empire fed on this chaos and stealthily encroached on its possessions.
Victor Davis Hanson, a historian at Stanford University, identifies some parallels:
“An ascendant China seems eerily similar to the Ottomans. Beijing believes that the United States is decadent, undeserving of its affluence, living beyond its means on the fumes of its past – and very soon vulnerable enough to challenge openly.”
Byzantium and Venice operated symbiotically, their cultures and strategic imperatives inextricably twined; the great cathedral of Saint Mark’s is a realization of Byzantine splendour transposed to the edge of Europe.
When the Turks conquered Constantinople, Venice lost many trading concessions. It fell back on Europe (where it was distrusted) and slowly lost when more aggressive enterprises like Portugal and Spain broke its monopoly.
There is, of course, no inevitability about the future of either Britain or the United States; both have strong identities and traditions that have withstood previous trauma.
We are, though, far closer to the Medieval than the Classical world – in a place of apocalyptic dread, frenzied self-doubt and a security riven by faltering contingencies.
The serene preparations of Harold Macmillan seem very far away.