This thesis is divided into four chapters which examine the principal areas of British and Italian economic and diplomatic relations in the 1 930s. Chapter One provides an outline history of Britain's financial dealings with Italy from the mid 1920s until 1939, in particular the role of the Bank of England in helping to reform Italy's financial system through, for example, the encouragement of a stable, gold-based Italian currency and the establishment of a respected and independent central bank, the Banca d'Italia. It examines the attitude of British clearing and merchant banks to the financial crisis in Italy immediately prior to the Italian attack on Abyssinia/Ethiopia in 1935, and explains their opposition to the granting of any sizeable loan to Italy. Finally, it details the policies of successive British governments to Italy's financial position, especially prior to, during and after the Italo-Abyssinian war, 193 5-1936. Chapter Two provides an outline history of Italy's important coal trade with Britain up to the early 1930s and charts and explains the loss of Britain's Italian market to Germany and other competitors. It examines the impact of League of Nations sanctions on the coal trade and reveals that this impact has been exaggerated since colliery owners were faced with large Italian debts and long delays in payment and had already begun to lose faith in Italian buyers. Additionally, it demonstrates that the colliery owners' efforts to lift sanctions and recapture the Italian market were weak and ineffectual. Chapter Three confirms that the major oil companies, including the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) and Royal Dutch Shell, were operating a global pricefixing and shipping cartel throughout the 1930s. It describes and analyses these companies' commercial activities in Fascist Italy, especially during the period of League sanctions against Italy. It confirms the vital significance of petrol and oil to the Italian economy and war effort and analyses some of the British government's motives in not introducing petrol sanctions. Chapter Four is concerned with British-Italian diplomatic relations mainly during the Abyssinian crisis. It examines the political divisions in the British and Italian governments over how to respond to the international crisis generated by the Italo-Abyssinian war. It demonstrates that the British government helped produce a sanctions policy which gave the appearance of severity when it was, in truth, only a legitimation of an effective commercial and financial embargo which British banks and companies had already imposed. The analysis of British-Italian diplomacy concludes that the Abyssinian crisis could have been handled very differently by Britain and contained both Italian and German aggression

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia. / Vita. "Printed with the aid of the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund, University of Cincinnati." Includes index. Bibliography: p. 617-[623].

Thesis (M.A.)--Brandeis University, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 29, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Issued also as Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johns Hopkins University. / Bibliography: p. 157-163.

This study examines the Allied notion of victory and how it was expressed in the depth of Allied strategic planning in 1918 for a campaign in 1919. Using the Supreme War Council (SWC) as a lens this study's arguments are threefold. The first is that, with the creation of the SWC, the Allies pursued a notion of victory that was focused on a decisive military defeat of the German army. Their timeline to victory over the enemy was affected by their perception of the enemy’s strength, their assessment of the difficulties inherent in overcoming the military advantage offered by the Central Powers' interior lines, their appraisal of the European members' morale to continue the war, and their ability to gather the necessary superiority in material and manpower resources. The second argument is that, through the SWC, the Allies were able to successfully coordinate strategy and resources. This study analyses the workings of the SWC as an international body and an early example of modern alliance warfare, comparing the perspectives of the British, French, American and Italian representatives in their willingness and unwillingness to coordinate national needs with alliance ones, arguing that the coalition did form a unified policy and strategy for the campaign in 1919. The abrupt ending of the war has obscured historians' understanding of coalition warfare in the First World War, as they have not sufficiently considered the serious planning that took place for 1919. Third, it argues that at the SWC level, the coalition members recognized the interdependent nature of the theatres, and thus the importance of all them for the conduct of the war.