Originally posted by Double Edge
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Britain made one hell of a dangerous play back during our Civil War. Rendering aid, trading with, and recognizing the belligerency of the Confederacy was an enormous mistake. There was nothing they could do to stop us from turning our enormous war machine and making a clean sweep of British North America in 1866/67. We were the world's pre-eminent land and industrial power at this point, and the primary population and economic centers of British North America were within marching distance of the US border.
We also could have incited and aided insurrection in Britain's other colonial possessions. The extent to and effectiveness with which we could have done this can be debated, but we could have had certainly had an impact, creating a real mess in parts of the British Empire. We could have also aided Britain's colonialist competitors in Europe, or gone into league with them against Britain. Russia comes to mind.
Having lost the Crimean War, and worried about the viability of keeping control of Alaska in the face of British consolidation in Canada, they sold Alaska to us to spite Britain, avoid losing it in a possible future repeat of the Crimean War, and as a thank you for allowing their warships to dock safely in our ports during the Crimean War.
I think Britain realized its mistakes and spent the next 60 years backpedaling, before finally cultivating us as an ally in the 1910s to counter-balance the Germans, on the basis of shared culture, language, etc.
France had made a double mistake in the 1860s, and paid the price for it. They took advantage of our distraction in our Civil War, and in a miscalculated misadventure, overthrew the Mexican government, installing the younger brother of the Austrian emperor as the "Emperor of Mexico". US policy, of course, was not to tolerate European intervention in the independent countries of the Americas.
We provided just enough aid after our Civil War ended to force France out, and shortly thereafter France's puppet, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, would-be Emperor of Mexico, was executed. France also found itself diplomatically isolated, and without friends, just a few years later, when the Prussians rolled into Paris and overthrew Napoleon III. History may have played out that way regardless, but their meddling in our backyard, as well as their aid to, recognition of the belligerency of, and trade with, the Confederacy, surely didn't help things either.
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