We frequently hear about the long-standing “Special Relationship” between the United Stated and Great Britain. In the twentieth century, the two powers bonded closely even as one waxed and the other waned. One superpower replaced another—without armed conflict between them. Only this once has that happened. Peter Deane explains the basis of this relationship through naval agreements from 1928 to 1930.
Herbert Hoover’s inauguration in 1929.
When one considers the “Special Relationship”, one often thinks of Prime Minister (PM) Winston S. Churchill, who made famous the phrase after World War Two (WWII), and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the real start was in 1929, by President Herbert C. Hoover and Prime Minster J. Ramsey MacDonald. A brief window for foreign policy progress was open, before the Great Depression took hold, when the negotiations leading up to the London Naval Conference of 1930 (LNC) took place. Hoover’s motivations in particular were unsentimental, and neither man sought an alliance. From this distance, the LNC itself seems history trivia: a disarmament conference that did not prevent WWII. However, the Anglo-American negotiations leading up to it left a lasting peace. After 1929, the Empire and the Republic may have had friction, but never was there a question of hostility. As late as 1928 this was not true.
The Situation through 1928
The nineteenth century saw alternate Anglo-American cooperation and friction. The Empire and the Republic shared a common language and some history. In 1902 the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Treaty seemed to Americans to be directed at their new Pacific power. The British interdiction of neutral American trade with the Central Powers during World War One (WWI) was a potent source of hostility among some Americans, particularly within the United States Navy (USN). Naval policy was a primary reason that the USN role was to safeguard belligerent rights, better known as “freedom of the seas”; i.e., American shipping and commerce; i.e., the American economy. The Naval Act of 1916 authorized a Navy “second to none”, but not one particularly suited to war against Germany. All knew the U.S. could out-build any island empire. The U.S. entered WWI only after Germany became a greater hindrance to American shipping than was Britain.
American entry into the Great War papered over the belligerent rights issue, as did post-War disillusionment among the victors. Pacifist sentiment among them in reaction to the War led to a round of agreements in 1921-1922 aimed at disarmament as a means of war prevention. Among them were the Four Power Treaty which replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and the Washington Naval Treaty which formalized Anglo-American “parity” in capital ships. The post-War Empire simply did not have the resources to out build the Republic.
This predicament sat poorly with some Britons. Churchill wrote that while many thought an Anglo-American war was unthinkable, “everyone knows that is not true…. Evidently on the basis of American naval superiority, speciously disguised as parity, immense dangers overhang the future of the world.” Britain nevertheless enjoyed a merchant marine quintuple the size of the American, with accompanying commercial advantages and many of which vessels could be armed, along with a worldwide set of fueling stations. The American code name for such a war was “War Plan Red.”
Anglo-American agreement on further naval limitation fell through in 1927 at a conference in Geneva. Many on both sides of the Atlantic felt that the collapse of the talks was due to domination of the talks by the respective naval staffs, who would not compromise. The next year an Anglo-French disarmament compromise was proposed, which primarily limited the class of naval vessels the USN valued most. (This was in part due to French concerns that an Anglo-American rapprochement would distract Britain from its ties with France.) President Calvin Coolidge pulled out of further disarmament talks and signed the Naval Construction Act of 1929 to build more of the non-treaty vessels.
Rivalry had officially resumed. International consensus was that a multinational disarmament treaty required the Empire and the Republic to settle their naval competition first.
But in 1928, a new President was elected, who endorsed not only the naval construction bill if it proved necessary, but also naval reduction (not just limitation) by treaty if possible.
1929: The Statesmen
The new President later recorded in his Memoirs that among basic goals of his administration was:
“Elimination of friction with Great Britain.
a. By ending naval competition.
b. By ending British expansion of air and naval bases in the Western Hemisphere.
c. By settling one major conflict over freedom of the seas by immunizing food ships from submarine attack in time of war.”
His Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, wrote of his own positions: “He inclined to place primary emphasis on the re-establishment of understanding with Great Britain; returning … to the Atlantic coast he had been shocked to find that anti-British sentiment had greatly increased…. Being himself a confirmed believer in the vital importance of firm Anglo-American friendship, he at once determined to make the repair of relations with Great Britain a cardinal objective…. The obvious first step was to reach agreement on naval limitation … but it was the restoration of understanding with Great Britain that he put first.”
The President was of Quaker upbringing and saw the proper role of the USN as defense of the Western Hemisphere. (The Philippines was to become independent.) The navy was adequate to the task as it was and could be reduced significantly, with much money saved—if Great Britain was amenable. American civilians saw war with Britain as unimaginable. Friction could only be eliminated by civilian leaders.
That same Spring, MacDonald became Prime Minister. He was felt to be something of an Americanophile. Both he and the Foreign Office wanted better relations with the United States and saw naval disarmament talks as the means to that end.
1929: Preliminary Negotiations
Hoover started in March by making statements favoring disarmament. On April 22, Hugh S. Gibson, American ambassador to Belgium and previous disarmament negotiator, proposed that the U.S. was prepared to develop “a method of estimating equivalent naval values”, such that parity did not mean identicality. (This method was not specified.) Soon known as the “yardstick”, the proposal was received with enthusiasm in both nations—a breakthrough in the naval disarmament issue. “What is wanted,” Gibson concluded, “is a common-sense agreement, based on the idea that we are going to be friends and settle our problems by peaceful means.” One British periodical called it an “American declaration of peace to Britain.”
In May, Hoover sent as an informal emissary to MacDonald, a journalist named Edward P. Bell, to gauge his thoughts about the matter and relations more generally. These included a possible (unprecedented) visit by the PM to the U.S. for direct talks with the President. The reply Bell cabled to Hoover: “HAVE AUTHORITY MACDONALD STATE THAT IF YOU INVITE HIM VISIT YOU WASHINGTON CANVASS WHOLE QUESTION BRITISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS HE WILL ACCEPT WITHIN TWENTY FOUR HOURS.”
Hoover was taken aback by the enthusiasm. On June 18, the newly-arrived American ambassador, Charles G. Dawes, gave a prominent speech in which he reiterated the principle of parity and civilian control of negotiations. Dawes was left with the details to negotiate. He and MacDonald did so over the following few months. By the fall, most issues had been agreed. The bulk of issues need to be resolved before MacDonald could visit, not least of all because the Americans wanted to be sure MacDonald would receive a friendly reception in America.
At his point, Hoover had agreed to forgo the belligerent rights question broadly. That Summer, Macdonald agreed to “parity” according to the yet-to-be specified yardstick, over the objection of his Admiralty. These two concessions, although not linked by anyone at the time, made the deal that made the Special Relationship. It also eased the peaceful rise of the U.S. concurrent with the early decline of British power.
Why did Britain agree to parity? Great Britain was facing financial limits, in part due to the debts incurred to the U.S. for WWI. It could not afford an arms race with the United States and its seemingly endless resources.
1929: The Rapidan Conference
MacDonald’s reception in American cities proved warm and enthusiastic. His meeting with Hoover took place mostly at Hoover’s Rapidan, Maryland, fishing camp. MacDonald parried Hoover’s proposals for immunity for food ships (the Admiralty would not accept this at all)—they agreed this could be discussed after naval disarmament was settled. He declined Hoover’s offer to purchase British naval bases in the Caribbean Sea, including British Honduras, but the bases ceased to expand in subsequent years. They agreed on parity of naval forces and the use of the yardstick even if the yardstick was not fully defined. London was agreed as the setting for the next multinational Naval Disarmament Conference.
Coverage of the Rapidan meeting generally eclipsed coverage of the October stock market crash. But the time when Hoover could concentrate on foreign affairs was coming to an end.
1930: The LNC
From our perspective, the LNC was somewhat anticlimactic. The LNC was the last major world conference attended by ship, for the Americans the U.S.S. George Washington, the same vessel which took the Wilson delegation to the Versailles conference. Stimson led the U. S. delegation now, with another Cabinet Secretary—Charles Francis Adams III, Navy—and other members. The negotiators were civilians, not naval officers. Naval men were there as technical advisers only, unlike the failed 1927 meeting. The leading naval powers, Great Britain, the Japanese Empire and the U. S., achieved trilateral agreement on naval limitation as hoped. France and Italy could not agree and withdrew.
The numbers and details of the London Naval Treaty are not important now. Its effect in Japan is beyond our scope here. But in both Britain and the U.S. it was considered a success and ratified that same year despite some naval opposition in both countries.
In perspective
Nineteen twenty-nine was a “hinge of history”. In the middle of the first half of the twentieth century, a deal was struck. That same half-century saw Germany twice fight violently to dominate Europe, only to founder on British opposition. One of the causes of WWI was the German Empire’s plan to achieve naval equality with the British, intolerable to the British. Yet the British Empire fifteen years later accepted parity, on paper, to the USN. Great Britain decided in this case that another war with the United States was not going to happen.
This settlement was not without cost to either side. Both Britain and the U. S. were constrained in their potential responses to growing Japanese militarism and aggressiveness, and in their preparations for possible Pacific war. The U.S. quietly abandoned over a century of work in peace and war to preserve freedom of the seas, even merely limited to food ships. Great Britain made sacrifices which in retrospect hastened its decline as a naval power.
Even the isolationism in the U.S. in the later nineteen-thirties, while a force among the American public, was not felt as antagonism at the highest levels of either nation. Hoover and MacDonald together had put hostility aside for good, and without fully realizing it.
What do you think of the period 1928-30 in Anglo-American relations? Let us know below.
Bibliography
Baer, G. W. One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U. S. Navy, 1890-1990. Stanford, CA; Stanford University Press, 1993 (Chap. 6)
Dawes, C. G. Journal as Ambassador to Great Britain. New York, NY; The Macmillan Co., 1939 (Passim)
Ferrell, R. H. American Diplomacy in the Great Depression: Hoover-Stimson Foreign Policy, 1929-1933. New Haven, CT; Yale University Press, 1957 (Passim, esp. Chaps. 1-3 & 5)
Hagan, K. J. This People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power. New York, NY; The Free Press, 1991 (Chap. 9)
Hoover, H. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: The Cabinet and the Presidency, 1920-1933. New York, NY; The Macmillan Co., 1952 (Chap. 45)
Jeansonne, G. The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker, 1928-1933. New York, NY; Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 (Chap. 7)
Maurer, J. H. and Bell, C. M., eds. At the Crossroads between Peace and War: The London Naval Conference of 1930. Annapolis, MD; Naval Institute Press, 2014 (Passim esp. Chaps. 0-2)
O’Connor, R. G. Perilous Equilibrium: The United States and the London Naval Conference of 1930. Lawrence, KA; University of Kansas Press, 1962 (Passim)
Roberts, A. “When Churchill Dissed America” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 2018
Stimson, H. L. and Bundy, McG. On Active Service in Peace and War. New York, NY; Harper Bros., 1947 (Chap. VII:2)
Wheeler, G. E. Admiral William Veazie Pratt, U. S. Navy: A Sailor’s Life. Washington, DC; Naval History Division, Department of the Navy, 1974 (Chap. IX)
