Abstract
The Council on Foreign Relations has given rise to its own mythology, attracting attacks from both Right and Left in American politics as an example of the ability of anti-democratic, elitist groups to set governmental policy.2 Robert D. Schulzinger, Michael Wala, and Inderjeet Parmar have also studied the Council’s role and influence upon American foreign affairs.3 Their works largely concentrate upon the period from approximately 1940 onwards, when the United States began to take an increasingly important part in world affairs, and upon the Council’s contribution to its country’s international transformation. This essay focuses on the Council’s earlier interwar activities, in the fifteen or twenty years after its foundation, and in particular upon its impact upon Anglo-American relations. In recent years historians have drawn attention to the development between the wars among certain sections of the foreign-policy elite in both Britain and the United States of sentiments in favour of closer Anglo-American relations.4 This essay suggests that the roots of the transformation in American international policies, most notably the dedication and commitment with which the United States government supported the Allies, especially Britain, during the Second World War, owed something to the Council’s previous efforts to improve Anglo-American relations.
Thanks are due to the University of Hong Kong’s Committee on Research and Conference Grants and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for generous financial support of the research on which this article is based.
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Notes
Examples of criticism from Right and Left are, respectively, Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government (New York: Americanist Library, 1962);
Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: the Council on Foreign Relations & United States Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977).
Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs: the History of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994);
Michael Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1994);
Inderjeet Parmar, ‘The Issue of State Power: the Council on Foreign Relations as a Case Study’, Journal of American Studies 29:1 (April 1995), pp. 73–96.
See also the Council’s own historical publications, esp. William P. Bundy, The Council on Foreign Relations: Notes for a History (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1994);
Peter Grose, Continuing the Inquiry: the Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996).
See e.g. Nicholas Cull, ‘Selling Peace: the Origins, Promotion and Fate of the Anglo-American New Order during the Second World War’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), pp. 1–14;
Priscilla Roberts, ‘The Anglo-American Theme: American Visions of an Atlantic Alliance, 1914–1933’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1997), pp. 333–64.
Quotation from Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Peace and Counterpeace from Wilson to Hitler: the Memoirs of H.F Armstrong (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), pp. 4–6, 181–5; see also Otto H. Kahn Papers, Princeton University Library [henceforward MS Kahn], boxes 132, 149, 172, files Council on Foreign Relations 1920, 1921, 1922; Thomas W. Lamont Papers, Baker Library, Harvard Business School [henceforward MS Lamont], files 21–6 to 21–7, 22–1 to 22–8; Schulzinger, Wise Men, 3–10; Wala, Council on Foreign Relations, pp. 1–9; Grose, Continuing the Inquiry, pp. 1–9.
On Armstrong, see my conference paper delivered at the annual conference of the British Association of American Studies, April 1998, ‘“The Council Has Been Your Creation”: Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Paradigm of the United States Foreign Policy Establishment?’; on Dulles, see esp. Ronald Pruessen, John Foster Dulles: the Road to Power (New York: Free Press, 1982).
New York Times, 4 May 1919; Robert T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819–1948, 3 vols (New York: Ad Press, 1946–48) Vol. 2, p. 256;
William H. Harbaugh, Lawyer’s Lawyer: the Life of John W Davis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 424; MS Lamont, files 27–5 and 27–6.
On the Morgan firm’s wartime financial activities, see MS Lamont, file 213–7, ‘Memorandum Relative to Financing by J. P. Morgan & Co. during the World War’, no date; Kathleen Burke, Britain, America and the Sinews of War, 1914–1918 (Boston, 1985), chapters. 1–5; idem, Morgan Grenfell 1838–1988: the Biography of a Merchant Bank (Oxford, 1989), pp. 103–34;
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: an American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York, 1990), chapter 10.
George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 63–109;
Michael G. Fry, Illusions of Security: North Atlantic Diplomacy, 1918–22 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 5–67;
D. C. Watt, Succeeding John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 24–163.
Prominent among the voluminous literature on this topic are those works by Egerton, Fry, and Watt cited above; Watt, Personalities and Policies: Studies in the Formulation of British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century (London: Longmans, 1965);
John E. Kendle, The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1975);
De Witt Clinton Ellinwood, Jr, ‘Lord Milner’s “Kindergarten”: the British Round Table Group and the Movement for Imperial Reform, 1910–1918’ (PhD diss., Washington, University, 1962);
A. M. Gollin, Proconsul in Politics: a Study of Lord Milner in Opposition and in Power (New York: Macmillan, 1964), esp. pp. 160–7, 323–46;
John Marlowe, Milner: Apostle of Empire (London: Hamilton, 1976), esp. pp. 209–16;
John Evelyn Wrench, Alfred Lord Milner: the Man of No Illusions 1854–1925 (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1958), esp. pp. 292–4; idem, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times (London: Hutchinson, 1965), esp. pp. 72–6;
David Astor, Tribal Feeling (London: J. Murray, 1963), esp. pp. 47–9, 65–79;
Christopher Sykes, Nancy: the Life of Lady Astor (London: Collins, 1972), esp. pp. 117–31;
John Grigg, Nancy Astor: a Lady Unashamed (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), esp. pp. 108–12, 137–53;
J.R.M. Butler, Lord Lothian (Philip Kerr) 1882–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960), esp. pp. 42–8, 68–70;
John Turner, Lloyd George’s Secretariat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 123–38.
For example, Viscount Cecil, ‘American Responsibilities for Peace’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1928), pp. 357–67; Viscount Grey of Fallodon, ‘Freedom of the Seas’, ibid., Vol. 8, No. 3 (1930), pp. 325–35; Chamberlain, ‘The Permanent Bases of British Foreign Policy’, ibid., Vol. 9, No. 4 (1931), pp. 535–46; Blackett, ‘The Economics of Indian Unrest’, ibid., Vol. 8, No. 1 (1929), pp. 41–51; Salter, ‘England’s Dilemma: Free Trade or Protectionism?’, ibid., Vol. 10, No. 2 (1932), pp. 188–200.
MS Council, records of meeting, 17 Feb. 1922; see also New York Times, 21, 22 March 1922; Thomas H. Buckley, The United States and the Washington Conference, 1921–1922 (Knoxville; University of Tennessee Press, 1970), p. 181;
H.C. Allen, Great Britain and the United States: a History of Anglo-American Relations (1783–1952) (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1955), pp. 741–2. The stenographer’s transcript makes it clear that the scepticism which greeted Cravath’s subsequent disavowal that he had ever made such remarks was entirely justified.
Davis, ‘Anglo-American Relations and Sea Power’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1929), pp. 345–55; Lippmann, ‘The London Naval Conference’, ibid., Vol. 8, No. 4 (1930), pp. 509–10; Stimson, ‘Bases of American Foreign Policy’, ibid., Vol. 11, No. 3 (1933), pp. 366–8.
Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: the Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), pp. 97, 124; Parmar, Special Interests, pp. 69–70.
Kerr, ‘Navies and Peace: a British View’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1929), pp. 20–9; Howland, ‘Navies and Peace: an American View’, ibid., pp. 30–40.
For example, Whyte, ‘The East: a Survey of the Post-War Years’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1932), pp. 148–60; T.E. Gregory, ‘Britain and the Gold Standard’, ibid., Vol. 11, No. 2 (1933), pp. 268–78; Sir Walter Layton, ‘After the World Economic Conference’, ibid., Vol. 12, No. 1 (1933), pp. 20–9; Stamp, ‘The Economic Consequences of the Peace’, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1934), pp. 104–12.
Schulzinger, Wise Men, pp. 35–8; David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–41: a Study in Competitive Co-operation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 17–18;
Richard N. Kottman, Reciprocity and the North Atlantic Triangle, 1932–1938 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), chapter 7.
Auld, ‘The British War Debt: Retrospect and Prospect’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1938), pp. 640–50.
Victor Gordon Lennox, ‘Anthony Eden’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 4 (1938), pp. 691–703.
Priscilla Roberts, ‘The American “Eastern Establishment” and the First World War: the Emergence of a Foreign Policy Tradition’ (PhD dissertation, Cambridge University, 1981), p. 577; MS Council, records of meetings, comments by Coudert in digest of talk by Sir Graham Hutton, 3 Jan. 1939;
Edward M. Lamont, The Ambassador from Wall Street: the Story of Thomas W. Lamont,]. P. Morgan’s Chief Executive (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1994), pp. 427, 436–8.
Roberts, ‘“The Council Has Been Your Creation”’, pp. 10–16; Grose, Gentleman Spy, chapter 6; Godfrey Hodgson, The Colonel: the Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867–1950 (New York: Knopf, 1990), pp. 216–20;
Henry L. Stimson with McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper, 1947), pp. 313–20.
See Hamilton Fish Armstrong Papers, Mudd Manuscripts Library, Princeton University, box 44, Francis P. Miller files; The Fight For Freedom Committee Papers, Mudd Manuscripts Library, Princeton University; also Francis Pickens Miller, Man from the Valley: Memoirs of a 20th-century Virginian (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 89–104;
Mark Lincoln Chadwin, The Warhawks: American Interventionists before Pearl Harbor (New York: Norton, 1970).
Willert, ‘British News Controls’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1939), pp. 712–22; Cranborne, ‘Why Britain Fights’, ibid., Vol. 18, No. 2 (1940), pp. 220–8; Robbins, ‘How Britain Will Finance the War’, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1940), pp. 525–34.
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Roberts, P. (2001). Underpinning the Anglo-American Alliance: the Council on Foreign Relations and Britain between the Wars. In: Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Relations. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985311_2
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