Why didn't Britain invade the USA during the Civil War?

The USA was an irrelevant literal who? right until about 1918. No need to meddle.

>>2696141
They were massive competitors with England's steel trade and were one of the fastest growing nations on the planet. Whilst they weren't a superpower yet, everyone knew they would be.

Also, it restores prestige.

>>2696104

Supporting the Confederacy made sense from a realpolitik standpoint, but there was little political support and Britain didn't have that big of a military presence in Canada.

Direct British intervention against the United States also would have sparked a war with Russia, who backed the Union (again as a counterweight to Britain in the Atlantic/Americas rather than due to political ideals), even stationing their Pacific fleet at San Francisco.

>>2696104
cuz the south proved they were losers at Antietam

>>2696154
>restores prestige
>implying it needed restoring

Peasant

>>2696181
Yeah, but what actually could Russia do? they don't share a land border with the UK.

>>2696154
I would say it has been far better for Britain in the long run to have an independent US: Britain is seen as a lenient supporter of national determination and gets a 'cousin' who can be relied on to support 'British core beliefs' down the decades to come.

Almost like that brother you don't talk to anymore, but would still stick up for you if shit hit the fan.

>>2696195
the UK is on an island, nobody shared a land border with them

>>2696196
The positive relationship between the Uk and the Us wasn't really a thing until 1941.


Also, the South had way more in common with the British than the North did.

>>2696209
I'm referring to foreign colonies as well.

>>2696104
Not worth it
Think about the possible outcomes
>Bloody the USA's nose a little, achieve nothing, wound pride and hurt trade relations
>Commit a total invasion force ensuring complete American defeat. Far too big and fiercely nationalistic to puppet state, too powerful to puppet by proxy under the South
Would've been a mistake on pair with Versailles

>>2696211
>Also, the South had way more in common with the British than the North did
That's more a Southern perspective than a British one because southerns were all teaboos

>>2696211
Brits were liberals. North was liberals. Brits ended slavery to have wagecucks who could buy their goods. Nuff said.

>>2696562
Why do the southerners claim to, out of curiosity?

>>2696211
What exactly happened to put the South on the side of the British? The dichotomy was originally southern/Anti-federalist/Democrat/French versus northern/Federalist/Whig/British, iirc.

>>2697213
At the time, the South had the silly idea that the British would want to protect it's source of cheap cotton textiles. what the south didn't know was that British investors feared an American civil war or slave rebellion would happen in the American south, so they had alternative sources for cotton in Egypt and India set up for that.

>>2696104
Because the amount of soldiers the Union and the Confederacy mobilized after first Bull Run made it impossible for a group of a few thousand marines to have any significant effect. 40 thousand soldiers travelling by sea for months to reach the new continent? dead within a week of fighting.

Financial suicide, pointless, waste of lives

File: 790px-1850CE_map.jpg (111KB, 790x483px) Image search: [Google]

111KB, 790x483px

>>2696216
orly?

What British interests are furthered with a military action in the ACW? They don't need cotton. They would have to defend what-would-be-Canada along a wide border of barely inhabited frontier land (aka the entire 49th parallel north) unlike the War of 1812. The North has a lot of manpower and a lot of industrial base, and the British would have to deal with guerilla/abolitionist movements in whatever land they did occupy. Britain's global standing would be hurt. Slavery was not in vogue by the middle 1800's in Europe, going to war to defend slavers would certainly hurt relations with the continent.

I don't see Britain doing anything but naval actions in the ACW.