At what point did the British Empire start looking at the United States as a potential ally and not a former hostile colony?

by imsopoor1

How did relations between the US and the british improve after the rebellion? What was the turning point that eventually made them into such strong allies and how did this happen?

edit: title should be *hostile former colony

TheLatexCondor

The transition started after the Civil War, slowly, and reached its conclusion somewhere around the turn of the century (historians differ slightly on when exactly it happened). If you look at British diplomatic actions from about 1862, once the Trent affair was settled, there's a definite move toward accommodation with the United States in geopolitical terms. Part of this was driven by simple balance-of-power politics (Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America, Berkeley, 1967) - The admiralty and war office decided that Canada was indefensible in practical terms, and there was a need for "economy" (i.e., cost-saving) in defense spending in the Americas because of political developments in Europe (unification of Germany, French naval buildup) and the increasing expense of building ironclad, steam-powered warships (HMS Warrior launched in 1860). Once Palmerston died, the biggest obstacle to rapprochement was out of government. The Treaty of Washington in 1871 settled outstanding Civil War claims, and the biggest obstacles to US-British friendship were mostly gone.

There were disputes aplenty in the years that followed, but the British government almost unfailingly chose to accommodate, to some extent, American demands. By the time of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in 1901, which superseded the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 and allowed the US exclusive control of an interocean canal, it's pretty clear that Britain has abandoned North America to US influence, not least because British leaders felt they could safely trust the Americans not to attack them while they paid attention to developments in Europe. Some historians interpret this early displacement of British power as a strategic calculation (Anne Orde, The Eclipse of Great Britain, NY, 1996) rather than a condition of weakness or imperial decline, as was the case during and after WW2, although others tie it to relative decline in the period 1900-1910 and perceptions of relative weakness (Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan, Princeton 1988).

*edited - misspelled an author's name in my haste

juicy_mcdingleberry

/u/TheLatexCondor has given an excellent answer and correctly notes that there is no scholarly consensus on there being an identifiable "turning point" when relations between the two countries suddenly improved. I would just like to note a few other factors that I think may be useful to consider when evaluating this phenomenon of Rapprochement.

First, there was a great amount of suspicion and hostility expressed by the Republican political establishment in the 1870's and 80's toward Britain. "Twisting the Lion's Tale" was a reliably effective tool for drumming up support for Republican foreign policy efforts. This was partly because there was lingering resentment over Britain's flirtation with supporting the Confederacy, which manifested itself in one particularly contentious episode in the form of the so-called "Alabama Claims." These were indemnities demanded by the United States in relation to the construction of a Confederate vessel, the C.S.S. Alabama, in British shipyards which subsequently had prolific career raiding Union commercial shipping. The dispute over the Claims went to international arbitration and stretched through until 1872 when it was ultimately decided in the Americans' favor. The Republican foreign policy establishment was ascendant for much of this period where any level of perceived connection with the Democrats or Southern interests were met with accusations of being a "copperhead" - essentially a traitor. Attitudes towards the British were informed by this dynamic.

There was also a certain amount of geopolitical competition in South and Central America, as /u/TheLatexCondor noted in their answer as it related to the Canal Zone. Figures like James G. Blaine (Secretary of State for Garfield and Benjamin Harrison) were looking to extend American influence in South America to the point of attempting to establish a Pan-American free trade zone (which would obviously favor U.S. interests). Blaine was particularly aggressive in intervening the War of the Pacific (1879-84) with the express purpose of blocking British influence. One of the more dramatic episodes relating to this Anglo-American rivalry was the Venezuelan Border Dispute of 1895. Venezuela and British Guiana each claimed a differing border (each of which gave them access to a valuable gold reserve respectively). As the dispute came to a head, the United States invoked an unprecedentedly aggressive reading of the Monroe Doctrine to claim the right to decide the outcome of this dispute as it occurred in the Western Hemisphere and Venezuela was in their charge. The British eventually acquiesced to arbitration and the border was drawn to their favor with paltry input from the Venezuelans. The U.K.'s tacit acceptance of this broad interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and the ultimate American support of British claims in Venezuela were an improvement to relations.

By this time (the 1890's), a new foreign policy establishment in the United States was beginning to emerge which did not share in the Anglophobic sentiments of players like Blaine. Figures like John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, and Theodore Roosevelt had a great affinity for Britain and saw them as a model for their program of American expansionism in the Pacific. Cordial relations were fostered between this cabal and the British diplomat Sir Cecil Spring-Rice. A greater American presence in the Pacific by this time was amenable to British interests as it served as a valuable check to Russian expansionism which the U.K. believed threatened its vital Asian interests, particularly India. There was also a cultural and political affinity based upon racial ties (i.e. Anglo-Saxon superiority exemplified in Kipling) and a shared liberal political tradition particularly in opposition to the tyranny exemplified (to their minds) in Imperial Russia and Germany.