‘The Deep and Latent Distrust’: The British Official Mind and the United States, 1919–1929

Abstract

In the 1920s, the group of men responsible for the conduct of Britain’s external relations, the British foreign-policymaking elite, was divided in its collective opinion about the United States. This derived from the fact that the years between the end of the Great War in 1918 and the London Naval Conference of 1930 saw decided strain in Anglo-American relations. Britain and the United States struggled with one another throughout this period: Britain to retain its position as the only truly global power against the American challenge; and the United States to achieve its own global status over the opposition of the British. The general course of Anglo-American relations in the 1920s is well-known.1 It was dominated by two central issues, economic competition and naval rivalry, which in turn were permeated by Washington’s political isolation from international politics and concurrent aggressive economic diplomacy. This is not to suggest that there were continual flashpoints in the transatlantic relationship at this juncture. There were not. Indeed, a cooperative competition existed in several economic areas. But it remains that Anglo-American rivalry existed as a constant in international politics in the ten years or so after the Allied victory in 1918. What is not well-understood, however, is the way in which the British foreign-policymaking elite, the ‘official mind’ as far as external relations went, perceived the United States and, as a result, shaped Britain’s American policies.2 This dimension of the Anglo-American relationship in the 1920s needs to be examined in order to understand better how and why Anglo-American relations progressed as they did during that difficult time.KeywordsPrime MinisterForeign PolicyEuropean SecurityBritish PolicyEconomic DiplomacyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.