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Between 1930 and 1945 professional wrestling could lay claim to being one of the most transnational sports moving across the Anglo-world. Participants originated from western and eastern Europe, North America, the Antipodes, Britain and India. Significantly, wrestling was one of the few sports in which participants from the British Empire and the USA competed in these decades of comparative sporting isolationism. It is argued here that the ‘All-In’ American style which came to dominate the sport as an extreme and theatrical form of ‘catch-as-catch-can’ wrestling was not uniformly accepted across the Anglo-world. Cultural differences between the USA and the British Empire meant wrestling styles had to be adapted as they crossed national boundaries. The notion of ‘cultural hybridity’ is a valuable concept here as ‘All-In’ met three different responses within the Empire: complete acceptance, modification and rejection. The reasons for the varied responses are considered and the argument made that while American culture was at one level admired in the British Empire, there was also concern about perceived professionalization and corruption in North America, which wrestling seemed to epitomize. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Whilst the British and Americans expended blood and treasure together in the Kuwaiti desert in 1991, bureaucratic blood from both sides was also visible on carpets in London and Washington. The reason was attempts to replace the access to Heathrow airport of two failing airlines, Pan American World Airways and Trans World Airlines, with American and United Airlines. This succession rights affair was one of the most difficult diplomatic negotiations ever on civil aviation between the United States and Britain. How and why that controversy developed, its resolution, and what impact on, and feedback from, the broader Anglo–American relationship that it had are the main concerns of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reconsiders the negotiations between the United States and Britain at the outbreak of the 1982 Falklands War. The Reagan Administration did not support Britain, its staunchest NATO ally, and on the contrary assumed an even-handed position that recognised Argentina as a key ally as much as Britain. Not only did American mediation fail; it also caused a major crisis in Anglo-American relations. The underlying reason for the American decision was the obsessive importance that the Administration attached to fighting communism in Latin America after establishing covert co-operation with the Argentinian military junta in 1981. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The extent to which the Thatcher government supported the Carter administration in forcefully responding to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is disputed by a number of historians. Whilst some regard London's response as rhetorical at best, others believe it to have been a concrete demonstration of Prime Minister Thatcher's loyalty to the United States in its longstanding struggle against the Soviet Union. This article offers a more nuanced position that distinguishes between the degree of economic and diplomatic support the British government provided to Carter. Thatcher's diplomatic rejoinder to Soviet aggression over the course of 1980 was fierce, as evidenced by her strong stand on the Olympic boycott. However, Britain's precarious economic situation at the time of the invasion led the British government to provide only tepid backing to Carter in his attempt to punish Moscow through economic sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Second World War Anglo–American alliance was less cohesive on the political side than the military. There were widening divergences between Britain and the United States with regard to the best way to handle co-operation with the Soviet Union during 1944. Some shared assumptions about the motivations of Soviet policy existed, but British and American policy-makers not only formulated different approaches, they consistently viewed their own to be more successful than those of their ally. There was an opportunity to co-ordinate polices during American Under-Secretary of State Edward Stettinius's mission to London in April 1944 but the fact that the issue was barely discussed is symptomatic of the situation. The British Foreign Office gained the backing of Winston Churchill in an attempt to forge ahead with pragmatic arrangements with the Russians. A satisfaction with their own efforts on both sides meant that the British and American bureaucracies made no serious and sustained attempt to co-ordinate their policies towards the Soviet Union through 1944, in contrast to the closeness of co-operation in other areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses and portrays the bilateral relationship between Great Britain and Denmark from the end of the Second World War to 1951. It is shown how Great Britain played an important role for Denmark in this period both as a trading partner and as a political partner. This state of affairs was primarily due to most Danish politicians holding a dichotomous view on the still more influential partner in the far west, the United States. In the early post-war years, Denmark thus relied on Britain in both major and minor matters. It is argued that Britain exploited this state of affairs to promote British policies and political as well as economic interests in the still more important Nordic region in an era where British influence on world politics was diminishing and where British policies were certainly not always in concordance with American policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the British diplomatic documents published in the Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) volume, The Nordic Countries: From War to Cold War, 1944–1951, this article seeks to assess and discuss how and to what degree the documents reproduced in the DBPO volume may produce new insights into the Scandinavian alliance dilemmas of the early Cold War of choosing between a joint, but ‘neutral’ Scandinavian solution and Western alignment. The main argument is that the documents will not alter basic interpretations of why the Scandinavian option collapsed or about the driving forces behind the policy pursued by the Atlee government on the issue. However, the article also argues that the DBPO collection lends itself – in combination with the corresponding US documents published in the Foreign Relation of the United States series – to comparatively oriented research both in terms of assessing similarities and differences in the US and the UK approach to Scandinavian security and alliance involvement and to analysing the – differing and competing – attempts of Denmark, Norway and Sweden to obtain Western support for their individual approaches. Seen in a larger historical context, this picture seems to confirm a recurrent pattern of the post-1945 ‘grand designs’ in Nordic cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article looks at an episode which though it happened in Tunisia had a direct link to the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), and thus propelled the war to an international conflict that pitted the Western powers, namely; France, Britain and America against each other. By the time the incident occurred the Algerian War had been going on for just over three years with the French seemingly gaining the upper hand. This article endeavours to show how this incident complicated the Algerian conflict and how the episode was viewed internationally, especially from the British Government and media perspectives both had keen interest on the Algerian conflict as a result of their own empire in other parts of Africa. The article is based largely on archival research at the Public Record Office at Kew, (England) and Newspaper archives at Colindale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two years after the British government's ignominious reverse at Suez, the Cuban revolution triumphed in a sphere of prime importance to the United States. Fidel Castro's regime embarked on a radically nationalist path, and, like Britain's earlier experience in Egypt, Washington faced a serious challenge to its traditional ascendency as Cuba set about reducing US economic and political influence. As this article demonstrates, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations attempted to enlist the wholehearted cooperation of their main Cold War ally. While Macmillan's British government did accede in most cases, it was both mindful of recent events at Suez and averse to Washington's economic blockade of Cuba. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Interwar British retailing has been characterized as having lower productivity, less developed managerial hierarchies and methods, and weaker scale economies than its US counterpart. This article examines comparative productivity for one major segment of large-scale retailing in both countries-the department store sector. Drawing on exceptionally detailed contemporary survey data, we show that British department stores in fact achieved superior performance in terms of operating costs, margins, profits, and stock-turn. While smaller British stores had lower labour productivity than US stores of equivalent size, TFP was generally higher for British stores, which also enjoyed stronger scale economies. We also examine the reasons behind Britain's surprisingly strong relative performance, using surviving original returns from the British surveys. Contrary to arguments that British retailers faced major barriers to the development of large-scale enterprises, that could reap economies of scale and scope and invest in machinery and marketing to support the growth of their primary sales functions, we find that British department stores enthusiastically embraced the retail 'managerial revolution'-and reaped substantial benefits from this investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Vietnam War there were high expectations from the Johnson and Nixon Administrations for Japan and Britain to provide practical and political support for American military and strategic objectives in Indochina. The leader of Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party, Sato Eisaku, and the British Labour Party's Harold Wilson, balanced political support for the United States with significant public pressure at home to eschew any entanglement in the highly unpopular conflict. As junior allies of the United States both Sato and Wilson did not want to see the United States fail in Vietnam or the communist sphere expand in Southeast Asia. Both leaders accrued significant foreign policy advantages as a result of politically and publicly supporting American actions in Vietnam. But to placate domestic electorates that clearly felt uncomfortable over their governments providing explicit, albeit non-military, support to the United States in Vietnam, Sato and Wilson expended substantial prime ministerial diplomacy in attempting to play a mediatory role in the conflict. Each was highly successful in balancing domestic and American demands, whilst maintaining their security partnerships with the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a comparison of the Communist anti-fascist experience in the United States and Britain in the inter-war period. The focus is on opposition to domestic fascism and the comparison extends across three areas, namely, respective analyses, organization, and political violence. This article demonstrates how both Communist parties initially understood fascism as a developing trend within bourgeois capitalist democracy before they, reflecting the Comintern's shift to the Popular Front, reworked their anti-fascism into different forms of democratic and progressive rhetoric. It places Communists at the forefront of anti-fascist campaigns in the US and Britain and yet, despite obvious transatlantic links, this article reveals that the organizational manifestations of their anti-fascism diverged significantly. The final section calls attention to the role of Communists in physical force anti-fascism, and reveals that Communist involvement in violent disturbances during the 1930s (if not the 1920s) appears more common in Britain than in the US. Nonetheless, it still cautions against making too much of physical confrontation as the single most important feature defining the British Communist anti-fascist experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 13 March 1979, the first unconstitutional change of power in the Eastern Caribbean occurred in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, when the radical New Jewel Movement overthrew Prime Minister Eric Gairy. This article examines the policy of the British government towards the new People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the first month of the 'revolution'. It demonstrates that in contrast to the alarmist reactions of some of Grenada's neighbours, and the United States' intense concern about the PRG's pro-Cuban leanings, British policy was more optimistic and relaxed and designed to 'keep a line open' to Grenada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the production and reception of the television series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1960). It places the series in the contexts of telefilm production in Britain and the United States in the 1950s and examines the agency of key personnel including producer Hannah Weinstein, associate producer Sidney Cole and the involvement of numerous blacklisted American writers working under pseudonyms. The article argues that the politics of the series were influenced by these inputs, and examines selected episodes to show how the Robin Hood story was interpreted in the light of Cold War politics. It also shows how The Adventures of Robin Hood responded to the needs of audiences both in Britain and in America, where it was a significant popular success. It concludes with an assessment of the series' place in television history, marking the origin of the costume adventure series, or swashbuckler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1950 was a crisis year in the Cold War and saw a growing rift between the United Kingdom and the United States over how best to wage it. It was in the Far East that the most dangerous crisis occurred. Britain recognised the People's Republic of China, not only because the Communist regime clearly controlled the mainland, but also because it was felt that it was not irretrievably linked to the Soviet Union. The United States, on the other hand, regarded China as a Soviet satellite and displayed a consistently hostile attitude towards it. The situation worsened with the outbreak of the Korean War in June. Although the United States and Britain agreed that the invasion of South Korea must be repelled, the British were anxious not to broaden the conflict, whilst the Americans used it as a stick to beat the Chinese. The war also prompted accelerated rearmament and the Americans favoured the rearmament of West Germany. Things came to a head in November, with the large-scale Chinese intervention in Korea, followed in early December by a visit to Washington by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. The British believed that the United States had already concluded that a global war was inevitable, whereas they wished to avoid it if possible. As this article shows, the events of 1950 amply demonstrated the subordinate position of Britain in the 'special relationship.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The London Observer was the title given to the published version of the diaries of General Raymond E. Lee, US military attache in London in 1940-1941, edited by James R. Leutze, which appeared in 1971. Yet Lee did not arrive in London till spring 1940, as Britain's 'Finest Hour' sounded and the nation squared up to Luftwaffe air attack and the threat of German invasion. Compared with this phase of the Second World War, so extensively chronicled by historians, scant attention has been paid to British preparedness for war-and especially little to evaluations by America's London observers of the quality of British preparedness. This article seeks to fill that gap. Firstly, it highlights the severe organisational shortcomings and largely absent coordination that prevented the US diplomatic and intelligence apparatus forming coherent advice to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the State Department on whether Britain's defences, and Neville Chamberlain's government, could withstand the Third Reich. Secondly, it shows that seriously divergent assessments resulted as to the likelihood of Britain withstanding a war, notably as between the pessimism of Joseph P. Kennedy, the US ambassador to the Court of St James from 1937 to 1941 and father of later President John F. Kennedy, and the measured optimism of his professional defence advisor, Brigadier-General Bradford G. Chynoweth, Lee's predecessor as US military attache in London. Finally, it suggests the importance of personalities in international politics, as the difficulty for the State Department, the War Department and the President of accurately calibrating British war readiness in 1939 became greatly exacerbated by the personal animosity between their men on the spot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fractious Eden-Dulles relationship has become a staple of the historiography of Anglo-American relations in the 1950s and is often advanced as an explanatory factor for the sharp disagreements that afflicted the UK and the USA in 1954 over the Indochina War, German rearmament and European integration, and, more controversially, for the way in which the 'special relationship' reached its nadir over Suez in 1956. But what are the origins of this clash? In this article, the Eden-Dulles back-story is examined, from their first meeting in 1942 through to the Yoshida letter of 1952, and the roots of their difficulties in working with each other are located in a disagreement over how best to manage the Cold War in East Asia. This policy dispute was in turn accentuated by pronounced personal and temperamental differences so that well before 1956 the basis for mutual trust and understanding had been badly eroded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government documents from the British and American National Archives, currently within the public domain, have provided a revealing insight into Whitehall's and Washington's objectives in relation to the geopolitically strategic island of Cyprus. Whilst many continue to argue in favour of a Western conspiracy to overthrow President Makarios and divide the island in the summer of 1974, British and American governments' documents suggest that whilst the American intelligence community's role in the coup against Archbishop Makarios remains nebulous, any possible suggestion of collusion, whether British and/or American, with Turkey in its subsequent invasion, can now be largely dismissed. This article looks at the history of US and British policy on Cyprus from 1964-1974, by examining the crucial way in which Whitehall allowed its foreign policy vis-à-vis Cyprus to become influenced by decision-makers in Washington, and the role played by the two countries in the infamous and ultimately tragic summer of 1974. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the years before and during the Second World War, the Roosevelt Administration played an important and often overlooked role in encouraging Britain's disengagement from the Indian subcontinent. Roosevelt's motivations in pressing for Indian independence were varied. They included a mix of principled opposition to colonialism, practical concern for the outcome of the war and pragmatic jockeying for influence with post-colonial nations when the war was won. Churchill's government was wary of being pushed by Washington to move more quickly to 'quit India' than it thought prudent. U.S. policy and actions clearly influenced the direction of events toward independence, but U.S. caution as the war ground on led to disillusionment among nationalist leaders. This reaction would have consequences once swaraj was won and India came into its own, at a time when the Cold War was becoming the dominant factor in America's view of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sale of buses by the Leyland Motor Company to Cuba proved contentious, not only in the realm of Anglo-American relations, but also in the domestic sphere of a behind the scenes inter-departmental disagreement within the British government. This is because the bus exports pitted political against economic interests at the height of the Cold War and in the midst of a British export drive. As Her Majesty's Government readily recognized, Washington was particularly sensitive over any issue related to Cuba, which by 1963 was firmly in the communist orbit of the Soviet bloc and which the United States was determined to isolate economically through the application of a trade blockade. The decision to approve the sales came at the end of the Macmillan and Kennedy administrations, and clouded the short-lived partnership of Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home and President Lyndon B. Johnson. The bus exports became an election issue in the campaigns of both leaders in 1964, assuming a political significance that belied the buses' seemingly innocuous function and outward appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the early Cold War, Dr. Omond Solandt became Canada's leading defence research diplomat. As Chairman of the newly created Defence Research Board, Canada's first peacetime defence research organisation, Solandt established strong ties with Canada's senior allies, Great Britain and the United States, in the realm of military science and technology. His goal was to harmonise Canada's defence research agenda within this informal science alliance and to gain access to Allied scientific knowledge and technology. Solandt's efforts in maintaining strong and co-operative relations with London and Washington are examined, shedding light on the personal nature of Canada's efforts in the realm of defence research diplomacy, including within the controversial realms of biological warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a roundtable of reflections discussing the contributions and potential trajectory of British historical studies from scholars in the United States and Canada. Questions addressed within the section include the status of teaching 20th-century British history and issues at the undergraduate and graduate levels, the methodology and historiography used by North American scholars, and the influence of imperialism and globalization in the examination of 20th-century history. Multiple entries also reflect on the individual accomplishments of the authors as historians within the field.

The article discusses the political efforts of American and British labor movements during World War II, focusing particularly on the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The author explores the impact of national foreign policies upon the labor movements and considers whether national interests or the interests of the trade unions are considered most important by the unions. Other subjects considered include the trade union movement, internationalism, the International Labor Organization, international labor standards, interactions between the TUC, AFL, and the Soviet International Federation of Trade Unions, and union leaders Sir Walter Citrine and William Green.

The author comments upon various reports published within this special issue on the history of labor unions and foreign relations, including one by Elizabeth McKillen on labor during World War I, one by Geert Van Goethem on government policies regarding American and British labor movements during World War II, and one by Daniel Garcia on class relations within the U.S. armed forces at the end of World War II. Some of the subjects explored include the public opinion of the working-class in the U.S. regarding foreign policy, the study of international labor movements, and the inability of marginalised groups within the U.S. to influence political decision making.

The article focuses on diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Great Britain during the Berlin Crisis of 1961-1962. The author argues that American foreign policy was influenced by the personal relationships between Anglo-American politicians, diplomats, and other officials that went beyond the interactions between British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Other notable people discussed include British ambassador to the U.S. David Ormsby-Gore, U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk, British foreign secretary Alec Douglas-Home, and Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. The American two-part policy involving diplomatic negotiations with the Soviet Union and the buildup of NATO's (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) conventional weaponry are considered.

This paper focuses on the structural development of institution-based interest in genetics in Anglo-North American medicine after 1930 concomitantly with an analysis of the changes through which ideas about heredity and the hereditary transmission of diseases in families have passed. It maintains that the unfolding relationship between medicine and genetics can best be understood against the background of the shift in emphasis in conceptualisations of recurring patterns of disease in families from ‘biological relatedness’ to ‘related to chromosomes and genes’. The paper begins with brief considerations of the historical confluences of, first, heredity and medicine and, second, genetics and medicine which, in a third section, leads to a discussion about a uniquely ‘genetics-based approach’ to medicine in the second half of the twentieth century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As British Prime Minister, Edward Heath is generally believed to have presided over a distinct cooling in Anglo- American relations. His frosty personality, use of the term “natural”—instead of “special”—relationship, and determination to re-orient British foreign policy towards the European Community are felt to have deliberately foreclosed a more intimate partnership with the administration of Richard Nixon. This interpretation is captured most vividly in the writings of the President's National Security Adviser, and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. In contrast to such views, this article argues that despite considerable challenges, Anglo- American relations during Heath's premiership were not fundamentally weakened. Nor can Heath be considered “anti-American.” Moreover, the frictions experienced were often the result of American actions rather than anything which happened in London. A new understanding of Heath's actions and the circumstances of the time are needed when assessing the “special relationship” in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 1947 the British Treasury imposed a substantial tax on film imports, to conserve dollars for the purchase of essential goods from abroad. In response, the American film industry stopped exporting its product to Britain, and the US Embassy began lobbying vigorously against the tax. American diplomats wanted to promote free trade and feared that the US film industry might disseminate propaganda against European Recovery Programme aid planned for Britain. The tax was repealed in March 1948 partly due to Embassy protests, but the British authorities rejected the concerns of US diplomats over the subsequent quota system because of the seemingly greater importance of bolstering the indigenous film industry. This article examines the controversy over British film Policy 1947-1948 and offers fresh insights into the Anglo-American 'special relationship' and diplomatic representation in an era of growing US economic and cultural dominance. Among other things, it notes that what appears to be on the surface a relatively minor issue can have much broader implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines unpublished private letters exchanged in 1938-1939 between British diplomat Geoffrey Thompson and U.S. ambassador to Spain Claude Bowers for their insights into the diplomatic relationship between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the months before the outbreak of World War II. Differences between the United States and Great Britain over how to confront fascism in Europe are discussed, as are the Munich pact between Great Britain and Germany, and the British policy of appeasement.

Utilizing archival sources in both the United States and Britain to describe the changes in American policy in Iraq during World War II, and tracing the emergence of the United States as an important factor in Iraq's politics and history, the authors challenge the notion that the United States was a passive bystander to events there during the war. Washington initially followed the British lead, but, beginning in 1942, the United States became more assertive in its relations with Iraq, with American diplomats, State Department officials, postwar planners, and intelligence officers promoting the ideals of the Atlantic Charter while simultaneously aiming to secure Iraq's petroleum and tying it into a network of Western alliances. Iraq's vital strategic position and its rich petroleum resources made it an important part, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the American effort to secure, militarily and economically, the oil-rich Gulf region for the West in the postwar era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the diplomatic mission of United States Colonel Bonner Fellers to Cairo, Egypt in 1942 during World War II and the security breach that occurred with Fellers's communications back to the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. The author highlights the relationship between the British and American governments in the security issues that involved massive amounts of intelligence concerning British troops in Africa being leaked to the Axis countries, particularly Germany. The author also draws attention to the special nature of the relationship between the U.S. and British governments.