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| Robert Gassman ('18) |
This past month, I had the privilege of traveling to Oxford and London with the McConnell Center, on a cross-cultural study experience centered upon the political, philosophical and literary tradition of the United Kingdom, and how that tradition has been inherited by the American people. Of the many famous and grand sights I witnessed, from Christ Church College at Oxford, to the gallery of the House of Commons during question day for Prime Minister May, one of the most moving locations I visited was a small cottage in the remote village of Sulgrave. This sixteenth century charming little farmhouse was the home of George Washington’s ancestor Lawrence Washington, an upper middle-class wool merchant of who was at the height of his career in the 1540s. The home itself was quaint but elegant, restored to resemble the original features of sixteenth and seventeenth century life in England. What struck me the most was not the sections of original flooring, or historical relics found on the property, but rather it was the existence of the location itself. In 1911 a group of wealthy British and Americans from the Peace Centenary Committees were exploring options to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, which brought an end to the last formal Anglo-American conflict: the War of 1812. Many of these committees believed the purchase of Sulgrave Manor, the ancestral home of Washington’s family, would be an appropriate bridge to commemorate the shared history and comradery between our two great nations. By 1921, the Sulgrave Manor trust had opened the sight to the public, noting itself as the symbolic representation of the intertwined histories and enduring friendship of the British and American culture. To date, this symbol of Anglo-American cooperation has hosted thousands of visitors from both sides of the Atlantic.
What struck me about a British commemorative sight to George Washington is the significance of this symbol in a historical context. The United States as a nation is the embodiment of devolution of empire, being the first colony of the eighteenth century to successfully break away from a European imperial power. In a historical sense, the very existence of the American experiment is in direct defiance to the British global hegemony of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite this historical fact, in a matter of a few generations, the shared history and culture of the British and American people have buried to rest any memory of political quarrels from previous centuries. Sulgrave Manor, and the larger connectedness of the Anglo-American people is a testament to how the “people to people” interactions of cultures are far more significant than the isolated political squabbles of national entities. A symbol like Sulgrave reminds us that a perceived enemy of today, can be a valuable friend of the future, if your focus is on commonality.
Robert Gassman, of Louisville, Ky., is a senior McConnell Scholar studying political science, Asian studies, and history.