Empire's champion: Leo Amery and the imperial idea, 1900--1945

This is a study of Leo Amery, a British Conservative statesman and the leading proponent of the "New Imperialism" during the first half of the twentieth century. Amery's career in Parliament spanned the major events in the British Empire from 1900 until his retirement in 1945. As the London Times chief war correspondent he led the extra-Parliamentary fight for army reform following the Boer War. From 1916 to 1918 he served as under-secretary Lloyd George's war cabinet, in which capacity he drafted the text of the Balfour Declaration. As junior minister at the Admiralty he helped lead the "revolt of the under-secretaries" in the Conservative party which toppled the Lloyd George coalition in 1922. In the 1920s he served as First Lord of the Admiralty and then as Colonial and Dominions Secretary of State, all of which were considered "imperial" offices. As Dominions Secretary he helped to generate the Statute of Westminster as a new pattern for imperial relationships. Amery left the cabinet when the government fell in 1929 and did not join any governments in the 1930s. During these years he was a vocal opponent of disarmament and became a leader of an anti-appeasement faction in the Conservative party after Munich. In that capacity he led the, attack on Neville Chamberlain that brought down his government in 1940. Finally, as Secretary of State for India in Winston Churchill's war cabinet (1940--45), he charted the course for the transfer of power in 1947.; Such a resume would automatically suggest an examination of Amery's life; however, it is not this list of accomplishments that is important, but the underlying world view that prompted the actions that best characterizes Amery's career. All of Amery's attitudes and political actions sprang from a world view which he championed throughout his political life, although this often put him at odds with his own party's leadership. Influenced by Seeley and Parkin, Amery saw the British Empire as a Greater Britain, one entity divided by bodies of water, and to that vision he gave his complete allegiance. He searched constantly for a vehicle that would effectively promote imperial unity throughout the empire and commonwealth. During his career he attempted to use military reform, imperial federation, and economic integration as methods to promote imperial unity, and to create such bonds of mutual cooperation that political union would inevitably occur. Amery left a great legacy of cooperation and development within the imperial context. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful in his goal of imperial union, he wielded great influence at certain points, and his career creates an opportunity through which to study attempts to adapt both Conservatism and imperialism to twentieth-century political and economic life.