United Kingdom–United States relations
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Relations between the United Kingdom and the United States have ranged from close allies to military opponents since the latter declared independence from the former in the late 18th century. The Thirteen British Colonies that seceded from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776 fought a subsequent revolutionary war and a theatre of the Napoleonic Wars in 1812. During the World Wars the United States had surpassed the United Kingdom as the world's leading power, having overshadowed it economically from the late 19th century. Since 1940 the countries have been close military allies enjoying the Special Relationship built as wartime allies and NATO partners.
They are bound together by shared history, an overlap in religion, common language, legal system and kinship ties that reach back hundreds of years, including kindred, ancestral lines among English Americans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, Cornish Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Irish Americans, and American Britons. Today, large numbers of expatriates live in both countries.