48 Times Higher Education8 February 2018
Safe Passage: The Transition
from British to American Hegemony
By Kori Schake
Harvard University Press
400pp, £23.95
ISBN 9780674975071
Published 24 November 2017
T
he words “hegemon”,
“hegemony” and “hegem-
onic” are to be found on
most pages of this book, but if
their ubiquity is at times weari-
some, Kori Schake demonstrates
that no near synonyms will do.
Hegemony, she argues, is not
mere dominance or supremacy:
a truly hegemonic power is not
just supreme, but has “the ability
to set the rules of international
involvement, and to create order
amongst states by enforcing those
rules”. The hegemonic power
does not simply hold the high
cards in the international poker
game, it decides “what game the
players are engaged in”.
The central thesis of this
disturbing book is that history has
seen a succession of hegemonies,
but nearly all replacements of one
hegemonic power by another have
come about by violence as the
fading hegemon contests with all
its might the growing power of its
successor. There is one exception,
the replacement of British power
by American, a transition that
occurred from the early 19th
century to the mid-20th, and
which was uniquely peaceful. This
was, the author claims, a highly
contingent outcome, perhaps
a fortuitous accident, brought
about because at a crucial time
“America became an empire and
Britain a democracy”. The contin-
gent nature or special circum-
stances of this transition make it
highly unlikely that any challenge
to the prevailing hegemony of the
US will result in a similarly peace-
ful passage.
The transition from British to
American hegemony was a long
process, and it was not orches-
trated or planned by either power.
Schake’s view is that it can be
charted by incremental steps that
formed precedents and, over time,
a pattern of choices that hardened
into long-term policies. She takes
us through the steps that she
perceives as having led consecu-
tively to a growing amity, a
hegemonic alliance – and, eventu-
ally, the sidelining and then the
destruction of British interests.
A major question is why Britain
at the beginning of this process,
when it was strengthened by its
success in the Napoleonic Wars
and had close links to European
states, accommodated and concili-
ated the far weaker America.
There were several junctures at
which the UK could have put paid
to US ambitions and to what its
demagogues christened its “mani-
fest destiny”. In response to
disputes over Canada’s borders,
Britain could have utilised the
overwhelming military strength
that it enjoyed before mid-
century, but instead it settled
issues by diplomacy, while Lord
Palmerston considered, but
refrained from, a policy during
the American Civil War that could
have facilitated a Confederate
victory and devastated
America as a rising
power.
Schake follows Paul
Kennedy’s highly
influential bookThe
Rise and Fall of the
Great Powers
(1988) in seeing
British foreign
policy asin essence accommodative to
America’s rise to great power
status, suggesting that British
statesmen lacked confidence in the
durability of British power and,
conscious of the dangers of
stretching beyond its national
resources, knew that past
successes had usually
been accomplished in
alliance with other
powers. This led to
policies of pragmatism
and caution, with Britain,
rather than restraining
America’s desire to
expand at the
expense ofWhen Britannia
waived its rule
Only once has a supreme global power peacefully
ceded its reign to another, A.W. Purdue writes
the colonial powers and their
successor states on the American
continent, enabling that expan-
sion by providing the protection
of the Royal Navy. Britain, it
could be said, was managing
decline long before decline began.
The central argument inSafe
Passage, however, is that in the
late 19th century, sympathies
between the UK and the US
increased; their policies became
aligned for positive reasons as
similarities between the powers
increased. America became an
imperial power in all but name,
both within and, with the acquisi-
tion of Hawaii and the Philip-
pines, beyond the American
continent, while Britain, with
its widening electorate, became
more democratic. Rough edges
remained in the tacit alliance,
but a view of common interests
largely prevailed and was strong
enough to survive tests such as
the two Venezuelan crises,
although not strong enough to
bring America into the First
World War until late in the day.
The end of the First World War
marked the triumph of a joint
Anglo-American hegemony, but
also intimated at its eventual end.