The authorities who have examined the decisions made in Britain on the appeasement of Europe hardly consider the influence of United States and dominion opinion. Even in the 1960s the general works thought the dominions worth, at most, one or two lines. D.C. Watt implied dominion responsibility for the policy of the appeasement of Europe, but as Nicholas Mansergh has pointed out this is still an open question. Consideration of the influence of United States opinion on British policy has seemingly also been stunted by the European orientation of scholars. Several monographs do touch upon the subject. The usual verdict is that Chamberlain ignored United States opinion, cold shouldered any overture that Roosevelt made, and failed to assist in drawing the United States from isolationism. The purpose of this thesis is to reexamine the question in the light of the new evidence available in the papers of the committee of imperial defence, the cabinet, the cabinet committee on foreign policy, the dominions office, the foreign office, the papers for the prime minister, and the private collections of various participants such as Templewood, Inskip, Vansittart, Zetland, Samuel, Halifax, Simon, Colonel Arthur Murray and Lothian. Some account is attempted of the development of opinion in the United States, In the case of the dominions it was thought necessary to offer a fuller analysis of internal political developments which have not before been considered in relation to the influence of the doninions on British foreign policy. Newspaper reports, political speeches, and parliamentary debates which affected opinion and decisions at the time have been reexamined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:467883 |
| Date | January 1972 |
| Creators | Ovendale, Ritchie |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:21bda0c6-68fc-4220-a796-a182fdaad525 |
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