Abstract
“The world had narrowed,” wrote journalist Hanson W. Baldwin in January 1940. “Airplanes span oceans and continents, leap the seas that once were barriers.”1 The stunning fall of France four months later seemed to confirm this new reality; Americans no long felt secure behind their oceanic moats. Writing again in the New York Times, Baldwin observed that the airplane had “modified not only tactics but strategy; in the past the British Empire knit by sea power, was built upon the stepping stones of fuelling stations and naval bases; in the future the world struggle may be for air bases, stepping stones to new empires.”2 Sea power was by no means obsolete, but it had been eclipsed by the power of the skies. The “plane can span narrow seas, halve space and massacre time.”3
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Notes
Hanson W. Baldwin, “Problems of Defending Hemisphere Are Many,” New York Times (January 2, 1940), 70.
Hanson W. Baldwin, “Our Deal with Britain Affects a World’s Strategical Picture,” New York Times (September 8, 1940), 77.
Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” Wednesday March 30, 1944, File: “My Day, March–April 1944,” Box 3148, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
The naval air station in St. Lucia was reduced to caretaker status in September 1943, Jamaica’s in September 1944, British Guiana’s in November 1944, and the Great Exuma station in the Bahamas in June 1945.
A. Elwell Reid, Jr., “Many First Anniversary Celebrations in TBC,” Trinidad Guardian (May 8, 1942), 7.
B. Clifford, Governor of Trinidad to Secretary of State for the Colonies, January 22, 1944, DO 35/1736. PRO.
After the war had broken out, but before Pearl Harbor, the importation of U.S. newsreels into Trinidad had been greatly curtailed by a “gentleman’s agreement” between the Trinidad government and the distributors of U.S. newsreels. With the entry of the United States into the war, this gentleman’s agreement was replaced by the quota system.
A.B. Wright, Government House, Trinidad to Colonial Office, September 29, 1943, Governor’s Letters Volume 1939–41. Trinidad and Tobago Archives.
Hansard. Trinidad and Tobago. 1941. December 19, 1941. Cinematograph (Amendment) Ordinance, 1941.
Wright, Government House, Trinidad to Colonial Office, September 29, 1943.
The Foreign Office, which had originated the idea, hoped that the lessons learned could be applied to the Pacific where similar issues were expected to arise after the war. F. Kennedy, August 12, 1943, CO 971/21/7. PRO.
B. Clifford, Governor of Trinidad to Secretary of State for the Colonies, January 22, 1944, DO 35/1736. PRO.
Ibid.
P. Rogers, Minute, February 26, 1944, responding to British Guiana Report, CO 971/21/7. PRO.
P. Roget, March 31, 1945, CO 971/27 US Base Information to Cabinet. PRO.
Governor Gordon Lethem, British Guiana, 1 December 1944, CO 971/27 U.S. Base Information to Cabinet. PRO.
Clifford, Governor of Trinidad to Secretary of State for the Colonies, January 22, 1944.
Sir Bede Clifford, Governor of Trinidad to T.I.K. Lloyd (Colonial Office). February 15, 1944. 81868. CO 971/21/7. PRO.
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© 2009 Steven High
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High, S. (2009). Conclusion. In: Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618046_10
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