The Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture 2017: The Geopolitical Is Personal: India, Britain, and American Foreign Correspondents in the 1930s and 1940s. (23rd June 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cohen, Deborah
• Is Part Of: Twentieth century British history. Volume 29:Number 3(2018)
• Page Start: 388
• Page End: 410
• Publication Date: 2018-06-23
• Subjects: Great Britain -- History -- 20th century -- Periodicals; History -- Great Britain -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; 941.08205
• DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwy009
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0955-2359

Abstract

Abstract: This lecture explores the shared terrain between the new international history and the history of emotions. In the summer and fall of 1942, American foreign correspondents played a key role in sparking a furore over British rule in India. Drawing on their own first-hand reporting from India, they depicted the British Empire as retrograde and abusive, a dangerous, destabilizing force and a threat to the post-war peace. Diagnosing what it called 'a new landslide of anti-British feeling', the British Ministry of Information spearheaded the formation of high-level, interdepartmental, secret committee charged with the task of figuring out how to reconcile Americans to the British Empire. What they found was that the job itself was impossible: a significant proportion of Americans 'whose views, they concluded, were driven in large measure by emotion' would not under any circumstances soften their opinions about the British Empire.