Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East, 1933-1939 (review)

Abstract

This is an unabashedly revisionist book. It is not that its thesis is arresting: Anglo-American "special" relations originated in the Far East between 1933 and 1939 when London and Washington pursued parallel rather than joint policies to maintain the western Pacific balance of power. Rather, Kennedy's revisionism stems from attacking the supposed failings of almost every historian who has studied interwar Anglo-American relations, in particular, and British and American foreign and defence policy, in general; the list includes Brian Bond, Robert Dallek, Michael Howard, Peter Lowe, Malcolm Muir, David Reynolds, Donald Watt, and everyone in-between. Thus, works about Anglo-American relations after 1937 "fail to appreciate the true nature of the ongoing relationships that already existed" (p. 16 and n. 2). Non-American historians, critical of American policy in the 1930s for not supporting Britain, "have laboured under a number of mistaken liberal notions" (p. 3). Others "confuse Japan's tactical or operational competence and innovation with strategic superiority" (p. 10). Word limits prevent me from going on; I will just say that for Kennedy, the list of poor and/or unfortunate historians who have failed to provide an accurate account of Anglo-American relations in the context of the 1930s is staggering. Hence, his revisionism.