The American Challenge and the British National Press: 1925-1930

This thesis will examine the comment and debate on The United States and Anglo-American relations between 1925 and 1930, a period that has been identified as a low point in diplomatic relations between the two countries as well as one in which American cultural and commercial influence intensified to an unprecedented degree. The way in which the British press handled these pressures at a crucial point in the transition of power from Britain to the United States illustrates not just the way in which Britain came to understand the United States as a global power, but the way in which she defined herself in the new international power structure of the interwar years. Historians have traditionally dismissed the interwar press as a credible source from which to extract public opinion on the American question during these years. However, as this study will show, newspapers provide a valuable insight into the way in which the British public perceived the political, cultural and economic challenge posed by the United States, defined the terms by which this issue was publicly debated, and provided the causes and campaigns behind which Britons across all sections of society could rally to meet this challenge, laying the foundations for the more inclusive notion of national identity that would follow in the 1930s.