British Propaganda And Wars Of Empire

'Influence' is a slippery concept, yet one of tremendous relevance for those wishing to understand global politics. From debates on the changing sources of power in the international system, through to analyses of its value as an alternative to the active use of force as a policy instrument, influence has become a recurrent theme in discussions of international relations and foreign policy. In order to provide a better understanding of the multifaceted and shifting nature of influence, this volume looks at how the British government employed various forms of pressure and persuasion to achieve its goals across the twentieth century. By focusing on Britain - a global actor with great power objectives but declining physical means - the collection provides a wide range of case studies to assess how influence was brought to bear on a wide array of non-western cultures and societies. It furthermore allows for an assessment of just how effective - or ineffective - British efforts were at influencing non-Western targets over a hundred years of operations. By shedding important light on the efficacy of British efforts to sustain and advance its interests in the twentieth century, the volume will be of interest not only to historians, but to anyone interested in contemporary problems surrounding the operation of influence as a foreign policy tool.

Between 1942 and 1945, the British government conducted a propaganda campaign in the United States to create popular consensus for a postwar Anglo-American partnership. Anticipating an Allied victory, British officials feared American cooperation would end with the war. Susan A. Brewer provides the first study of Britain's attempts to influence an American public skeptical of postwar international commitment, even as the United States was replacing Britain as the leading world power. Brewer discusses the concerns and strategies of the British propagandists—journalists, professors, and businessmen—who collaborated with the generally sympathetic American media. She examines the narratives they used to link American and British interests on such controversial issues as the future of the empire and economic recovery. In analyzing the barriers to Britain's success, she considers the legacy of World War I, and the difficulty of conducting propaganda in a democracy. Propaganda did not prevent the transition of global leadership from the British Empire to the United States, Brewer asserts, but it did make that transition work in Britain's interest.

In 1914, advertising was much less sophisticated that it is today, radio was in its infancy, television was undeveloped, telephones were just coming into use, the gargantuan party rallies of Hitler or Mussolini were still in the future, and the idea of using ocmmunications media to control the thoughts of an entire population was new, relatively unexplored, and not of interest to governments to any great extent. Propaganda was a part of life before 1914, and the term was coming into increasingly widespread usage. But other institutions of society, such as the church, the press, business, political parties, and philanthropy, were the major producers - not government.

In order to provide a better understanding of the shifting nature of influence, this volume looks at how the British government employed various forms of persuasion to achieve its goals across the twentieth century. The collection provides a range of case studies to assess how effectively - or ineffectively - influence was brought to bear on an array of non-western societies. This volume will be of interest not only to historians, but to anyone interested in the operation of influence as a foreign policy tool.

In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers, history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.

This monograph presents a detailed account of how the British government developed new techniques of public relations and propaganda during World War II and in the early post-war period to mobilize the British empire in the war effort and in a new imperial relationship of partnership.