Abstract
The depression affected the United States more seriously and for longer than any other country. Whether or not its causes lay primarily there, the weight of the United States in the world economy meant that long and severe depression in that country had a proportionate impact on the rest of the world. In Britain the depression, while painful for individuals and regions and presenting many difficulties for governments, was relatively mild, and Britain emerged from the wreckage of the gold standard as leader of a relatively successful sterling monetary bloc. The long-term trend to American economic preeminence was not reversed; but for a few years the balance moved slightly back in Britain’s favour.1
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Notes
For the depression in general see Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression 1929–1939 (London, 1973).
For international aspects of the United States see H.A. Lary, The United States in the World Economy (Washington, 1943).
For Britain see D.N. Aldcroft, The Inter-war Economy (London, 1970).
Useful summaries include William R. Rock, British Appeasement in the 1930s (London, 1977); Kennedy, Realities behind Diplomacy, pp. 223–312;
R.A.C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement. British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (London and Basingstoke, 1993).
Other works include William R. Rock, Appeasement on Trial (Hamden, CT, 1966);
Neville Thompson, The Anti-Appeasers (Oxford, 1971);
Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler (London, 1975).
For an analysis, Gustav Schmidt, England in der Krise. Grundzüge und Grundlagen der Britischen Appeasement-Politik (Opladen, 1981), Eng. trans. The Politics and Economics of Appeasement (Leamington Spa, 1986).
For an analysis of the ideas see Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America 1935–1941 (Ithaca, 1966);
more generally Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse (New York, 1957).
For Hoover see Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy. For Stimson see Richard N. Current, Secretary Stimson. A Study in Statecraft (New Brunswick, 1954);
Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York and London, 1948).
For Roosevelt see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932–1945 (New York, 1979).
For Hull see Julius W. Pratt, Cordell Hull 1933–1944 (New York, 1964).
See for example Wickham Steed, American Review of Reviews, Jan. 1930; Sunday Times, 31 Aug. and 14 Sep.; F.L. Simonds, American Review of Reviews, Jan.; James Truslow Adams, Forum, Nov.;
Nicholas Roosevelt, America and England? (New York and London, 1930);
J.L. Garvin in Problems of Peace, 5th ser. (London, 1931);
Norman Angell in Carl Russell Fish, Norman Angell, and Rear Adm. Charles L. Hussey, American Policies Abroad. The United States and Great Britain (Chicago, 1932).
Economist, 13 Aug. 1932; Frank Darvall, Contemporary Review, Oct.; Raymond Buell, Political Quarterly, Oct.; Frank L. Simonds, Can America Stay at Home? (New York, 1932), p. 361.
Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy. The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933 (London, 1972) supersedes all earlier accounts.
Henry L. Stimson, The Far Eastern Crisis (New York, 1936) is a version written by a major participant soon after the events.
Reginald Bassett, Democracy and Foreign Policy. A Case History. The Sino-Japanese Dispute 1931–33 (London, 1952) has a polemical purpose but is useful for British press opinion.
Ian Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism. Japan, China and the League of Nations 1931–3 (London and New York, 1993) uses Japanese sources.
Norman Angell, The Defence of the Empire (London, 1937), pp. 92–115.
For the whole subject see N.H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy (History of the Second World War, UK military series), I, Rearmament Policy (London, 1976); also G.C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury 1932–1939 (Edinburgh, 1979);
Robert Paul Shay jr., British Rearmament in the Thirties (Princeton, 1977).
Full accounts in Ann Trotter, Britain and East Asia 1933–1937 (London, 1975);
S.L. Endicott, Diplomacy and Enterprise. British China Policy 1933–1937 (Manchester, 1975).
See Edgar B. Nixon (ed.), Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (Cambridge, MA, 1969), II pp. 250–4, 258–61, 263, 290–3, 315–19.
New York Herald Tribune, 11 Jan. 1935, reprinted in Walter Lippmann, Interpretations, 1933–1935 (New York, 1936), pp. 355–6.
British Commonwealth Relations. Proceedings of the First Unofficial Conference on British Commonwealth Relations, Held at Toronto from September 11–21, 1933, ed. Arnold Toynbee (London, 1934); Round Table, Dec. 1933;
Sir A. Zimmern, Fortnightly Review, Apr. 1934; and International Affairs, May.
A.R.M. Lower, Nineteenth Century, Sep. 1933.
See in general Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Appeasement’ and the English-Speaking World (Cardiff, 1975); Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance.
See Michael Dunne, The United States and the World Court 1920–1935 (London, 1988).
On the neutrality legislation see Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932–1945 (Lincoln, NE, 1983);
Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago, 1962).
Also, for the intellectuals who argued that intervention in 1917 had been a crime or an error, Warren I. Cohen, The American Revisionists. The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago, 1967).
See for example Hamilton Butler, North American Review, Jun. 1934;
Oswald Garrison Villard, Nation, 17 Jul. 1935.
Samuel Flagg Bemis, Yale Review, Dec. 1935.
See for example Charles Warren, Yale Review, Mar. 1935; George Soule, New Republic, 21 Aug.; Frank Darvall, New Statesman, 5 Oct.; editorial in New Republic, 25 Dec.; Nation, 8 Jan., 29 Jan., 12 Feb. 1936;
T.J. Wertenbaker, Atlantic Monthly, Jan.; Quincy Wright, The United States and Neutrality (Chicago, 1935);
Edwin DeWitt Dickinson in Neutrality and Collective Security, ed. Quincy Wright (Chicago, 1936);
Phillips Bradley, Can We Stay Out of War? (New York, 1936);
Allen Dulles and Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Can We be Neutral? (New York, 1936).
An example of Anglophobic isolationism: Quincy Howe, England Expects Every American to Do His Duty (New York, 1937).
See for example New Republic, 9 Jan., 20 Mar. 1935; H.B. Monkland, North American Review, Feb.; Nation, 13 Mar.; Raymond Buell, Political Quarterly, Jul.; Walter Millis, The Future of Sea Power in the Pacific (New York, 1935);
Eugene J. Young, Powerful America. Our place in a rearming world (New York, 1936).
For a full discussion of American policy see Dorothy Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938 (Cambridge, MA, 1964).
See J.T. Emmerson, The Rhineland Crisis, 7 March 1936 (London, 1977).
See Laurence R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez (Cambridge, 1975).
See for example The Times, 25, 26, 27 Nov. 1935; 10 Feb., 30 Oct., 2 Nov. 1936; 25, 26, 27 Oct. 1937; B.H. Liddell Hart, When Britain Goes to War (London, 1935); Europe in Arms (London, 1937).
On Liddell Hart and his influence see Brian Bond, Liddell Hart, a Study of his Military Thought (London, 1977);
John J. Mearsheimer, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Ithaca, 1988).
Sir Charles Mallett, Contemporary Review, Dec. 1936.
Lothian, Round Table, Sep. and Dec. 1936, Mar. 1937; Contemporary Review, Oct.
See also J.R.M. Butler, Lord Lothian (London, 1960).
See Holland, Britain and the Commonwealth Alliance, Beloff, Dream of Commonwealth; James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada. Appeasement and Rearmament (Toronto, 1965), pp. 81–91;
H. Blair Neatby, William Lyon Mackenzie King. II, The Prism of Unity 1932–1939 (Toronto, 1976).
DBFP, ser. 2, XIX, ch. 7; Earl of Avon, The Eden Memoirs, I, Facing the Dictators (London, 1962), pp. 586–606; Iain Macleod, Neville Chamberlain (London, 1961), pp. 211–17;
A.R. Peters, Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931–1938 (Aldershot, 1986), pp. 321–57.
DBFP, ser. 2, XVIII, nos 202, 250, 268, 285, 290, 357; J.M. Blum (ed.), From the Morgenthau Diaries, I, Years of Crisis 1928–1938 (Boston, 1959), pp. 456–9, 463–7.
See Ian M. Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy 1917–1939 (London, 1974);
Ian M. Drummond and Norman Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade (Waterloo, Ontario, 1989).
See Benjamin M. Rowland (ed.), Balance of Power or Hegemony. The Interwar Monetary System (New York, 1976).
Accounts of the negotiations in Drummond and Hillmer, Negotiating Freer Trade; Richard N. Kottman, Reciprocity and the North Atlantic Triangle 1932–1938 (Ithaca, 1968).
Correspondence, Jun.–Jul. 1937 in PRO, PREM 1/261; A 4370, 4412, 4527, 4881/228/45, FO 371/20660–1; DBFP, ser. 2, XIX, no. 25. See William R. Rock, Chamberlain and Roosevelt (Columbus, Ohio, 1988);
C.A. MacDonald, The United States, Britain and Appeasement 1936–1939 (London, 1981).
Text of the ‘Quarantine’ speech in FRUS, Japan 1931–1941, I, pp. 379–83; The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman (New York, 1938–50), VI, pp. 406–11. For the Sino-Japanese war and British and American policy see Borg, Far Eastern Crisis;
Bradford A. Lee, Britain and the Sino-Japanese War 1937–1939 (Stanford, 1973);
Peter Lowe, Great Britain and the Origins of the Pacific War (Oxford, 1977).
See for example The Times, 6 Oct. 1937; Economist, 9 Oct.; New Statesman, 9 Oct.; New Republic, 13 Oct.; Nation, 16 Oct.; Sir A. Salter, Political Quarterly, Oct.; DBFP, ser. 2, XXI, no. 300. Further press quotations in John Dizikes, Britain, Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York, 1979), pp. 293–5.
See for example New York Times editorial, 30 Nov. 1937; David L. Cohen, Atlantic Monthly, Nov.; Livingston Hartly, Is America Afraid? (New York, 1937).
See Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision (New York, 1944);
Adolf A. Berle, Navigating the Rapids (New York, 1973), pp. 140–1, 143–5, 162–3; FRUS, 1937, I, pp. 667–8;
Donald B. Schewe, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs 1937–1939 (New York and London, 1979), IV, no. 748.
See especially Keith Middlemas, Diplomacy of Illusion. The British Government and Germany 1937–1939 (London, 1972).
Professor H.N. Fieldhouse, International Affairs, May–Jun. 1938; Round Table, Mar. See Ovendale, ‘Appeasement’ and the English-speaking World.
See for example Livingston Hartley and Quincy Howe, North American Review, spring and summer 1938; W.Y. Elliott, Political Quarterly, Apr.; Nation, 17 and 24 Sep.
Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes (New York, 1954), II, pp. 476–81, 497–8.
For the Anglo-German talks see Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, ser. D, IV, nos 257, 262, 267, 273; Berndt Jürgen Wendt, ‘ Economic Appeasement’. Handel und Finanz in der Britischen Deutschlandpolitik (Düsseldorf, 1971), p. 256.
Notes by R. Byron, Jan. 1939, A 1143/1143/45, PRO, FO 371/ 22827; Bertrand Russell, Nation, 11 Feb. 1939.
Strategic Appreciation Committee, PRO, CAB 16/209; memoranda and minutes, 1–15 Mar. 1939, W 3784, 4831/108/50, FO 371/ 23981; PREM 1/309; CAB 29/93; Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–1949, II, ed. R.G. Neale, nos 42, 46, 60, 70, 111–13, 118. See Gibbs, Grand Strategy, I, pp. 421–6. For the whole history of the Singapore base see W. David McIntyre, The Rise and Fall of the Singapore Naval Base (London, 1979).
Tweedsmuir to Runciman, 1 Mar. 1937, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Runciman Papers, WR 285. Examples of continuing belief in neutrality and a hemispheric policy: George Fielding Eliot, The Ramparts We Watch (New York, 1939);
Charles A. Beard, A Foreign Policy for America (New York, 1940);
Edwin M. Borchard and William Peter Lage, Neutrality for the United States (New Haven, 1940).
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Orde, A. (1996). Appeasement, Isolationism and the Approach of War in the 1930s. In: The Eclipse of Great Britain. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24924-4_5
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