What We Do

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 The First workshop was titled Sulgrave as House and Symbol and our speakers were Dr Sam Edwards (MMU) and Dr Grace Mallon (Oxford). Our panellists explored what the house (and its 16th-century estate) discloses and what it does not, the questions and problems to which it points, and its symbolic power. Chaired by Dr Nigel Bowles, (SMT Chair 2019-2022)

Our speakers for the second session, Common Ground and Differences, were Dr Jay Sexton (Kinder Institute, Missouri), and Dr Tom Cutterham (University of Birmingham). Our panellists explored areas of common ground and areas of difference between Britain and the United States in the long arc of transatlantic relations since 1781; what the character, purposes, and understandings of George Washington himself disclose about America’s place in the late eighteenth-century world; and the points of connection, disconnection, and disruption in the structuring of relations between the United States and Britain in the succeeding centuries.

Sulgrave’s Autumn 2021 Seminar focussed upon two Presidents: George Washington, and Ronald Reagan, linked by the topic of building and rebuilding trust in the idea of America, and by the question: “How do presidents go about the task of building trust in new institutional arrangements, or rebuilding it in those cases where it had been shattered?” The seminar linked George Washington’s ancestral home at Sulgrave Manor in England with his own home at Mount Vernon in Virginia.  

The first part of the seminar comprised talks by Dr Nicholas Cole of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Dr Grace Mallon, of the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, under the moderation of Dr Kevin Butterfield, Executive Director of George Washington’s Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. For Washington, a fundamental problem was how to establish trust in a system defined by suspicion of government and authority, and in a context where the new Republic’s survival was uncertain.

The second part of the seminar comprised talks by Professor Gareth Davies of University College, London, and Dr Nigel Bowles, of the Sulgrave Manor Trust, under the moderation of Dr Nadia Hilliard of University College, London. For Reagan, a major challenge was to break out of the historical context of seeming American military, economic, and reputational weakness and of growing distrust of Americans in their institutions that Reagan exploited to defeat Carter in 1980. The talks considered Reagan’s values, and their relationship to trust, and his pursuit of greatness both for himself and for the United States. 

At various times since his death Abraham Lincoln has been adopted as a democratic talisman by each of the main American political parties. Most recently, in 2020, when anti-Trump Republicans formed a Political Action Committee to stop the re-election of a president they judged a threat to democracy, they took the name The Lincoln Project.

Lincoln’s public career coincided with the emergence of mass democratic politics in the United States. Running for office during the 1830s and 1840s, he did much to develop the art of party management and winning elections. As an Illinois state legislator and a US congressman, he handled adroitly the interplay of public opinion and law-making.

Victorious in the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln inherited a political crisis that would culminate in civil war. As the Union’s commander-in-chief he adapted his leadership to the new realities of constitutional government in wartime, battlefield carnage, and turbulent public opinion. Yet state and national elections in the North went ahead largely as prescribed. In an ultimate test of democratic practice, the president himself stood for re-election in 1864 – and won.

In this lecture Professor Richard Cawardine examined Lincoln’s political values and practice, and asked: what kind of a democrat was he?

Marking Juneteenth for the first time SMT invited Dr Nina Yancy to speak to us about the subject of her new book.

What is the relationship between where White Americans live and what they think about issues related to race? What does that tell us about the nature of anti-Black prejudice in America today? In honour of Juneteenth, SMT held a conversation about these questions with Nina Yancy, author of How the Color Line Bends: The Geography of White Prejudice in Modern America (Oxford University Press).
 

How the Color Line Bends starts with a deep dive into Baton Rouge, Louisiana amidst a racialised fight over schools and cityhood, and then examines attitudes toward welfare spending and affirmative action in cities across the United States. In the process, the book explores topics ranging from power and positionality, to racial segregation, to White liberals, to the Black middle class.
 

Nina Yancy is a 2013 graduate of Harvard College and went on to earn her doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She has several years of experience as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where she has served clients across federal, state, and local government, as well as in the social sector, with a focus on workforce and economic development, re-skilling for the future of work, and promoting racial equity. Nina also is a contributor to the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility, where she has co-authored research on topics including financial inclusion and Black entrepreneurship.

Proponents of the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain have presented the connection as the inexorable outcome of shared culture, language, and traditions. But this view masks the true origins of the transatlantic connection, which can be found in moments of acute geopolitical crisis. This lecture by Dr Jay Sexton will sketch out the crises that made the special relationship, before concluding with the suggestion that, once again, we found ourselves on the precipice of an alliance making (or breaking) era of global instability.

The "Special Relationship" has been declared dead on multiple occasions over the last fifty years. And yet as phrase and idea it continues to occupy a powerful position in transatlantic political culture. Is this some sort of Zombie diplomacy? An idea that refuses to die even though its means of sustenance seem increasingly absent? This lecture by Dr Sam Edwards examines the origins of the "special relationship" as post-war British aspiration, and it suggests that at the moment of its first public articulation (in 1946) it quickly entered the realms of political mythology (as Churchill, a uniquely skilled mythologiser, always intended). To this extent, the "special relationship" is akin to an article of faith; it has become a matter of belief. Hence why it survives despite repeated obituaries. It exists because it exists, and no evidence of its apparent decline or disappearance has yet proved sufficient to occasion its demise.