As we started expanding in the Pacfic, guarding both oceans required the help of The Royal Navy, which is why we became “Anglophile”.
>>As we started expanding in the Pacfic,
I guess the expansion is American business and missionary interests in China, which resulted in promulgation of the Open Door Policy in 1900, American acquisition of the Philippines in 1898 after the Spanish American War, and American annexation of Hawaii in 1998.
To some extent, Britian was still a competitor of the US until WW I, so I’m not sure that the need for naval cooperation was a big motivation for Anglophiles.
I think that it was more a matter of British “soft power” influence over the WASP elite who always felt threatened by the numbers of other European ethnic groups such as Germans, Irish, Poles, Scandinavians, Italians, and various west Slavs from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Actual Englishmen were a minority by WW I. And those categorized as English included Irish and Scots who had emigrated from England.