Anglo-American Relations in the 1920s: The Struggle for Supremacy

257 Pages·1991·13.197 MB·English

by  Brian J.C. McKercher

ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS IN THE 1920s
The Struggle for Supremacy
Also by B. J. C. McKercher
ESME HOWARD: A Diplomatic Biography
SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY,
1895-1914 (editor]
THE SECOND BALDWIN GOVERNMENT AND THE UNITED
STATES, 1924-1929: Attitudes and Diplomacy
THE VIETNAM WAR AS HISTORY (editor)
ANGLO-AMERICAN
RELATIONS IN THE
1920s
The Struggle for Supremacy
Edited by
B. J. C. McKercher
Royal Military College of Canada
Foreword by
D. Cameron Watt
OCA
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA PRESS
First published in Canada by
The University of Alberta Press
141 Athabasca Hall
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E8
1990
Copyright © B. J. C. McKercher 1990
First published in England by
The Macmillan Press Ltd,
4 Little Essex Street,
London, England, WC2R 3LF
ISBN 0-88864-224-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Anglo-American relations in the 1920's
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-88864-224-5
1. United States — Foreign relations — Great
Britain 2. Great Britain — Foreign relations —
United States. I. McKercher, Brian.
E183.8.G7A53 1990 327.73041 C90-091378-9
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner.
Printed in Great Britain
on acid free paper
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Notes on contributors viii
Foreword by D. Cameron Watt x
Introduction 1
B. J. C. McKercher
1 Ideology, Diplomacy and International
Organisation: Wilsonism and the League of
Nations in Anglo-American Relations, 1918-1920
George W. Egerton 17
2 The Symbol and the Substance of Seapower: Great
Britain, the United States, and the One-Power Standard,
1919-1921
John R. Ferris 55
3 Between Two Giants: Canada, the Coolidge
Conference, and Anglo-American Relations in 1927
B. J. C. McKercher 81
4 The House of Morgan in Financial Diplomacy,
1920-1930
Kathleen Burk 125
5 Anglo-American Monetary Policy and Rivalry in
Europe and the Far East, 1919-1931
Roberta Allbert Dayer 158
6 The Image of Britain in the United States,
1919-1929: A Contentious Relative and Rival
Benjamin D. Rhodes 187
7 The Deep and Latent Distrust': The British Official
Mind and the United States, 1919-1929
B. J. C. McKercher 208
Index 239
v
Acknowledgements
The editor and the other contributors would like to thank the
staffs of the following archives, institutions, and libraries for
their help in our research; the Bank of England, London;
Barings Bank, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Brit-
ish Library, London; the Master, Fellows, and Scholars of
Churchill College in the University of Cambridge; the Univer-
sity Library, Cambridge; the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York; the Harvard Business School; the Herbert Hoover Presi-
dential Library, West Branch, Iowa; the House of Lords
Record Office, London; the India Office Library, London; the
Library of Congress, Washington, DC; the Minnesota Histori-
cal Society, St Paul, Minnesota; Morgan Grenfell and Com-
pany, London; the National Archives, Washington, DC; the
National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; the National Maritime
Museum, Greenwich; Nuffield College, Oxford; Princeton Uni-
versity Library, Princeton, New Jersey; the Public Record
Office, London; the School of Oriental and African Studies,
London; the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh; the Sterling
Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; and the
Naval History Division, Washington Navy Yard, Washington,
DC.
We are grateful to the copyright holders of the following sets
of papers and manuscript collections for permission to examine,
and where appropriate quote from, the materials under their
control: Sir Charles Addis; Ray Stannard Baker; the first Earl
Baldwin of Bewdley; Admiral Lord Beatty; R. H. Brand; Sir
William Bridgeman; Rear-Admiral Victor Brodeur; Viscount
Cecil of Chelwood; Sir Austen Chamberlain; Sir Henry Clay;
Calvin Coolidge; the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston; John W.
Davis; Admiral Sir Sydney Freemantle; Baron Hankey; Charles
Evans Hughes; Admiral Lord Jellicoe; Frank B. Kellogg;
Edwin W. Kemmerer; Admiral Lord Keyes; Thomas W.
Lamont; the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; Ernest Lapointe;
the first Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor; the eleventh Marquess
of Lothian; the second Earl of Lytton; James Ramsay MacDon-
ald; William Lyon Mackenzie King; Lord Norman; James Ral-
ston; Lord Revelstoke; Admiral Sir John de Robeck; Rear-
vi
Acknowledgements vii
Admiral Frank Schofield; Oscar D. Skelton; the Benjamin
Strong-Norman Montagu correspondence; Tennyson d'Eyn-
court; Admiral Lord Wester-Wemyss; and Woodrow Wilson.
Of course, our thanks are also extended to those archives
holding official papers: the National Archives, Washington, DC
(the records of the State Department); the National Archives
of Canada (the records of the Department of External Affairs
and the Department of National Defence); and the Public
Record Office, London (the records of the Admiralty, the Cabi-
net, the Foreign Office, and the Treasury).
Notes on Contributors
Kathleen Burk is Lecturer in History and Politics at Imperial
College, University of London. Her publications include Brit-
ain, America and the Sinews of War 1914-1918 (1985), The First
Privatisation: The Politicians, the City and the Denationalisation of
Steel (1988), Morgan Grenfell 1838-1988: the Biography of a Mer-
chant Bank (1989), an edited book of essays, and a number of
articles on Anglo-American relations and economic diplomacy.
Roberta Allbert Dayer is the Executive Director of the West-
ern New York International Trade Council Inc. in Buffalo,
New York. Her publications include Bankers and Diplomats in
China, 1917-1925 (1981), Finance and Empire: Sir Charles S. Addis,
1861-1945 (1988), and many articles.
George W. Egerton is Associate Professor of History at the
University of British Columbia. The author of several studies
on the history of international organisation, including Great
Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations (1978), he is
presently directing the Political Memoirs Project, editing a
symposium of studies on memoir, and writing a critical history
of the genre of political memoir.
John R. Ferris is Assistant Professor of History at the Univer-
sity of Calgary. His publications include Men, Money, and Diplo-
macy: the evolution of British strategic policy, 1919-1926 (1989), plus
several articles on British military and strategic policy and
intelligence.
B. J. C. McKercher is Associate Professor of History at the
Royal Military College of Canada. His publications include
The Second Baldwin Government and the United States, 1924—1929:
attitudes and diplomacy (1984), Esme Howard: A Diplomatic Biogra-
phy (1989), a couple of edited books on various aspects of
international history, and articles on Anglo-American relations
and British foreign policy in the twentieth century.
Benjamin D. Rhodes is Professor of History at the University
viii
Notes on Contributors ix
of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has published a large number of
articles on Anglo-American relations in a variety of journals,
as well as The Anglo-American Winter War with Russia, 1918-1919:
A Diplomatic and Military Tragicomedy (1988)
D. Cameron Watt, of the Department of International History
at the London School of Economics, is the Stevenson Professor
of International History at the University of London. His pub-
lications include Personalities and Policies (1965), Too Serious a
Business (1975), Succeeding John Bull (1984), and How War Began
(1989). Along with a number of edited books, he is now the
co-editor, with Kenneth Bourne, of the series British Documents
on Foreign Affairs (ongoing).