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Whitehall, Washington and the Promotion of American Studies in Britain during World War Two

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

David Reynolds
David Reynolds
Affiliation:
David Reynolds is a Research Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Research for this article was generously supported by a BAAS/ACLS fellowship from the Idlewild Trust, and by grants from the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is also grateful to Mrs. Kathy Nicastro and Mr. Bill Lewis of the National Archives in Washington for assistance in locating relevant documents, and to Professor H. G. Nicholas and Dr. J. A. Thompson for their helpful comments on a draft manuscript. Quotations appear by kind permission of Birmingham University Library (Neville Chamberlain Papers), the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office (Crown copyright documents in the Public Record Office) and the Trustees of the Tom Harrisson Mass-Observation Archive.
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Extract

On 18 March 1941 Duff Cooper, the British Minister of Information, sent a short but important letter to the President of the Board of Education. In it he discussed the lack of American studies in British schools and universities and called upon the Board urgently to consider ways of improving the situation. On the face of it, the moment was hardly propitious for minor educational reform. Britain was fighting on alone against Germany and Italy, the Battle of the Atlantic had worsened, and new setbacks were about to befall British armies in Libya, Greece and Crete. Yet Duff Cooper's suggestions were adopted with an alacrity that was remarkable by Whitehall standards. An ambitious programme to promote the study of America was quickly set in train for elementary and secondary schools, followed, though more slowly and less successfully, by action at the university level. Throughout, the Ministry of Information and the Board of Education enjoyed the enthusiastic support of other Government departments, particularly the Foreign Office, and of outside bodies including the BBC and Oxford University Press. Also closely involved were the American Ambassador, John Winant, several US Consuls around Britain and distinguished American historians such as Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager. These developments constitute an important and neglected episode in the story of American studies in Britain. They also offer an interesting sidelight on the place of cultural diplomacy in the foreign policies of the British and US Governments during World War Two.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , August 1982 , pp. 165 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Duff Cooper to Herwald Ramsbotham, 18 03 1941, Board of Education Papers, ED 121/3 (Public Record Office, London – henceforth PRO).

2 The Times, 19 05 1939, p. 18Google Scholar.

3 Smith, Paul, ed., The Historian and Film (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russett, Bruce M., Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1963), p. 123Google Scholar.

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6 Skard, Sigmund, American Studies in Europe: Their History and Present Organization, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1958), 1, 59. Ch. 2 of this vol., esp. pp. 57–71Google Scholar, provides the background for much of this paragraph.

7 See “Interim report submitted by Mr Joseph Scott,” July 1937, and Hubert Howard to W. G. Humphrey, 14 Nov. 1938, papers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 24192 and 24182 (Columbia University Library, New York). The Endowment's London office conducted a thorough survey of American studies in the summer of 1937.

8 D. W. Brogan to Joseph Scott, 8 July 1937, Carnegie Endowment Papers, 24305.

9 Skard, 2, 70.

10 Morison to Frankfurter, 1 March 1937, Felix Frankfurter Papers, 85/1751 (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For the mid-1930s efforts see Frankfurter to Roosevelt, 24 Jan. and 5 Feb. 1935, ibid., 98/2004, and Robert W. Bingham, diary, 11 May 1935 and 16 May 1936, Bingham Papers, box 1 (Library of Congress).

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24 Listener Research Report, LR/296, 8 July 1941, copy in Ministry of Information Papers, INF 1 /292 (PRO).

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26 E.g., Sir Kenneth Clark, “Publicity about the U.S.A. in Britain,” 21 June 1941, copy in INF 1/312.

27 Home Planning Commt. minutes, items 516, 528, 545 (quotation), 13, 16 and 20 Jan. 1941, INF 1/249.

28 Cooper to Ramsbotham, 18 March 1941, ED 121 /3. The Board of Education was renamed the “Ministry of Education” in the 1944 Education Act.

29 Greenwood to Ramsbotham, 17 June 1941, Cabinet Office Papers, CAB 117/95 (PRO).

30 R. A. Butler to Ramsbotham, 9 April 1941, Foreign Office general political correspondence, FO 371/26228, A2469 (PRO).

31 Board of Education, The schools in war-time, memos 26 and 28: The teaching of the history of the United States of America – I (July 1941), II (Feb. 1942) and 31: A list of books dealing with some of the aspects of the Geography of the United States of America (June 1942). Scottish Education Department, memo 234: America and the Schools (Nov. 1941). (Copies of the Board memos can be found in ED 138/27.)

32 Cf. correspondence of autumn 1940 in FO 371/24249, A4533/434/45.

33 Nevins to Stephen Early, 15 Aug. 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers, Official File (OF) 4281: Winant; Nevins to Winant, same date, John G. Winant Papers, box 210: Nevins (both Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.).

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38 Eden to Ramsbotham, 20 June 1941, ED 121/3; R. A. Butler, minute, 18 Nov. 1941, ED 121 /4.

39 The exact total was 3026. The detailed breakdown was as follows: 1941: London — 278; Newcastle — 158; Bingley — 161; Oxford — 167; Exeter — 164; Maidstone — 184; Birmingham — 240; Cheltenham — 126; Bishop's Stortford — 137; Aberystwyth — 119. 1942: Loughborough — 214; Manchester — 261; Bingley — 152; Chichester — 117; Darlington — 138; Liverpool — 197; Culford — 120; Aberystwyth — 93. Figures from Board memo, Aug. 1944, ED 121/102.

40 Inspectorate memo, 37 (Gen), 9 Dec. 1941, ED 135/1.

41 D. B. Adams, “Report on USA Courses, 1941–42”, Feb. 1943, ED 121/4.

42 House of Lords, Debates, 5th series, Vol. 123, Col. 872, 15 July 1942.

43 R. A. Butler to Lord Elton, 12 May 1942, ED 121/145. The Oxford and Cambridge Joint Board set a special subject on the growth of the USA from 1815 to 1865, and both the Oxford and Cambridge Local Boards offered a paper on The History of the British Empire since the Tudors as an alternative to European history.

44 Report cited in note 37.

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49 Mary Somerville to Dorsey Fisher, 6 Nov. 1942, with enclosures, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, box 2975 (Roosevelt Library).

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51 See papers in ED 121/77, esp. report by Louise J. Riley, 17 March 1945.

52 Parker W. Buhrman to R. S. Brownell, 5 Feb. 1942, and Buhrman to SecState, desp. 127, 5 Aug. 1942, Records of US Foreign Service Posts, RG 84, Belfast, files 841 and 842 (National Archives, General Archives Division, Suitland, Maryland).

53 This section is based on the mass of papers in RG 84, Manchester, file 842 (1942–45). See also RG 59, 123 AR/56.

54 Board of Education, Meet the U.S. Army (London: HMSO, 1943)Google Scholar, quotations from pp. 6 and 20. Cf. FO 371 /34118, A6944.

55 J. W. Moss to Gen. Ira C. Eaker, 23 Nov. 1942, Carl A. Spaatz Papers, box 322 (Library of Congress).

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57 RG 84, Birmingham, file 842, esp. Pasley to Wilkinson, 29 Nov. 1943 and Wilkinson to Col. Killian, 13 Dec. 1943.

58 Minute by E. E. Y. Hales, 2 Sept. 1942, ED 121/7.

59 Adams, report, Feb. 1943, ED 121/4.

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63 R. A. Butler, minute, 18 May 1942, ED 136/668.

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65 Thomas W. Lamont to Archibald MacLeish, 1 Oct. 1942, Lamont Papers 61–28 (Baker Library, Harvard University Business School).

66 This paragraph is based on correspondence of Sept.-Nov. 1941 in Norman H. Davis Papers, box 2: Astor (Library of Congress).

67 George A. Armstrong to Glenn A. Abbey, 25 Oct. 1941, RG 84, Manchester, file 800 (Confidential); John S. B. Stopford to Richard A. Johnson, 10 Jan. 1944, RG 59, decimal file for 1940–44, 841.42/140. The Chair of American History and Institutions was filled in 1948 and in the early 1960s a Department of American Studies was established.

68 Nevins, diary, 28 April 1941, Allan Nevins Papers, box 32 (Butler Library, Columbia University); Allan Nevins, “Report,” 30 June 1941, Carnegie Endowment Papers, box 14, report 940.

69 See RG 84, London, 842: Harmsworth Professor (1942–45), esp. minutes of meeting of 27 Nov. 1945. For wartime changes at Oxford see also Nicholas, Herbert, “The Education of an Americanist,” Journal of American Studies, 14 (1980), 19–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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72 Sources for this paragraph are FO 371/34190, A5131, and ED 121/7, quotation from Sylvia Goodfellow to B. C. Sendall, 14 Aug. 1943.

73 Adams, report, Feb. 1943, ED 121 /4.

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75 See guidance memos 18 (April 1940) and 33 (August 1942) in ED 138/27.

76 Mass-Observation Bulletin, new series, No. 7 (April 1947), p. 3 (Mass-Observation Archive).

77 For background to this paragraph see Helen R. Pinkney, “The Division of Cultural Cooperation,” unpublished TS, Dec. 1945, in RG 59, War History Branch Studies, box 10: CU file; also Ninkovich, Diplomacy of Ideas, and Espinosa, J. Manuel, Inter-American Beginnings of U.S. Cultural Diplomacy, 1936–1948 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976)Google Scholar.

78 Theodore Achilles, memo, “Cultural Relations with Great Britain,” 22 Jan. 1942, RG 59, decimal file 1940–44, 811.42741/120. Cf. RG 59, War History Branch Studies, box 55, folder 9: RC – Extension of Activities – British Empire.

79 Richard A. Johnson, “An American Cultural Relations Program for Great Britain”, 26 Jan. 1945, RG 84, London, file 842: Cultural Relations; George A. Armstrong, “Opportunity for a Cultural Program in the Manchester-Sheffield Consular Area,” 5 Feb. 1945, RG 84, Manchester, file 842.

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