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Well written history of one of the most enduring relationships between nation-states in modern times. It has endured. Mr Hitchen's explains why. ( )

Well written history of one of the most enduring relationships between nation-states in modern times. It has endured. Mr Hitchen's explains why. ( )

Blood, Class and Empire is a densely argued and slow-paced historical review from the usually very readable Christopher Hitchens. I was surprised, given Hitchens' usual ready wit, choice quotations and forceful arguments, that I found this one – on a subject that I've long had an interest in – to be largely absent of those charms and, unfortunately, a bit of a grind.

Rather than the usual Hitchens charm, we get a mostly humourless and almost entirely negative accounting of the Anglo-American political relationship. The negativity comes mostly from Hitchens' arguments about this 'special' relationship (as I shall discuss in the next paragraph) but it was still disappointing, on a personal level, that few of the typical Hitchens attractions could be found here. Similarly, the author's usual eye for quotations is less apparent. This is largely because he is forwarding an argument that relies on providing documentary evidence and consequently needs extensive quotation from governmental memoranda, political assessments and other typically unexciting sources.

I also found Hitchens' central argument, whilst intriguing, to be rather limited. The thrust of the book is that Britain, with its empire declining, sought to attach onto the rising power of the United States in order to maintain its own status. This, of course, is not a new argument and is quite an orthodox suggestion among historians, but Hitchens makes a related argument that seems to blame Britain for how the United States has turned out in the 20th and 21st centuries. He suggests that Britain traded on its cultural and political ties with the fledgling world power not only to support its own creaking superpower status (the orthodox view) but also to subvert the American republic and infect it with imperial values: to "stimulate and [help] aggrandize... the superpower spirit among American elites." (pg. 28). For Hitchens, this "unlocking [of] the imperial potential of the United States" (pg. 188) was a deliberate attempt to create a sort of British Empire by proxy.

This is bordering on conspiracy theory (though Hitchens is nowhere near as hysterical), taking the suspicions of 'perfidious Albion' too far. Britain sought to influence American policymaking, of course, but to claim – as Hitchens does – that "every time the United States had been on the verge of a [historic] decision... there has been a deceptively languid English advisor at the elbow, urging 'yes' in tones that neither hector not beseech but are always somehow beguiling" (pg. 360) is quite paranoid and ridiculous. There may be some merit in the view that a close relationship with Britain has not been a positive influence on the USA but, if the republic has indeed been replaced by an American 'empire' in all but name, then the fault and instigation for this rests with America alone. Britain may well have "reimported" to the USA all the "elements of pre-1776 [political] antiquity... that 1776 was intended to dissolve" (pg. 360), but it did so only because it found such a ready market on American shores. If the British were always "on hand" whenever America "needed to lose any kind of virginity" (pg. 330), it was only because she was willing to be seduced.

The truth is that the United States in reality has never measured up to its self-projected image, even as far back as 1776. (For example, it is a commonly-known fact nowadays that a number of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and an abolition or condemnation of slavery did not find its way into any of the assertions of universal liberty in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution.) A country with the global superpower potential of the United States was always likely to forget its early republican and freethinking ideals, or at least deal hypocritically with them. In fact, the main rival to the fledgling superpower's immediate interests (up until 1917 and maybe even 1945 – or even Suez in 1956) was Britain itself, and the two powers could have warred with much more frequency than they actually did. So it is hardly likely that a British superpower – which was still earnestly trying to reassert its imperial primacy as late as the 1950s – would have spent all that time trying to nurture a foreign power that would provide a direct threat to its interests. Hitchens' argument is coloured by an excessive disdain for Britain's political system (which he sees as an aristocracy more than a democracy) and an excessive belief in the ideal American republic. The United States has always been a martial country and a colonial country – first with the Spanish and the French, then revolting against the British, then eliminating the Native Americans in the colonizing push West, then establishing regional hegemony with the Monroe Doctrine, then the suppression of a Confederate rebellion... I could go on.

Hitchen's argument is an arresting one, and possessing of such poetic justice that I can see why he would want it to be true. At first I thought he was overdoing the 'Greeks to their Rome' analogy, but when I read the conclusion – with its reminder that it was imperialism and Caesarism that brought the Roman republic down – I could see the strands of excited thought coming together. It's a powerful idea to suggest that Britain eventually won its revenge for 1776, and replaced the Republic with a neo-British Empire under another flag, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

It's a shame that Blood, Class and Empire proved to be so ordinary, as Hitchens was well-placed to write on the subject of the 'special relationship'. A British man living (and in love with) the United States, and a wry and vigorous critic of contemporary politics and society, this book should have been a tour de force. But Hitchens does not play to his strengths here. Much of the book is historical narrative, tracing the development of Anglo-American relations during that critically important first-half of the twentieth century, but with conclusions that are somewhat unsound. He does better when discussing the various 'cults' and affectations – the American love for 'Brit kitsch' like monarchy and Churchill and so on – but these choice passages are mixed in with a much denser prosing.

Also to the book's discredit is that it doesn't really address much beyond 1990. This was when the first edition was released under a different title, but Blood, Class and Empire in its current guise was published in 2004. Yet, with the exception of a brief Preface, it doesn't address anything after 1990. It makes the book less topical; there is no 9/11 or Afghanistan or Iraq or Bush and Blair or WMDs or anything in Hitchens' discussion.

But despite my disappointment at the absence of the usual Hitchens charms and my disinclination to accept the general thrust of his main argument, I did gain some things from the book. One was an appreciation that American imperialism came much sooner and was much more ruthless than historians usually admit, even if I remain unconvinced by Hitchens' attempts to foster all the blame for this onto sly British power-players lurking in the shadows. I also gained a further appreciation that the 'special relationship' is much messier, more volatile and less structurally stable than the rhetoric of politicians and journalists usually assures us. Hitchens claims in his 2004 preface that one merit of his book is to argue that the assumption that "an Anglo-American partnership is in the natural order of things... is historically unsound." (pg. xv – xvi) He succeeds in this aim, pulling the rug from under the claim of eternal Anglo-American brotherhood (or at least cousinhood), and so, for all its faults I still feel I have gained something of considerable value from Blood, Class and Empire. ( )

Hitchens seems to have a conversation with you; as if I was an equal which of course I am not. ( )