| dc.description.abstract | This thesis analyses the political and intellectual trajectory of Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery. Although Amery has been mainly known as a staunch advocate of the British Empire/Commonwealth, and particularly of the introduction of imperial preference, he was involved in numerous political issues, such as Army Reform in the Edwardian era, the making of British foreign and defence policy, the constitutional reforms in the imperial peripheries, the establishment of the British Commonwealth as a new imperial framework, and the European Movement after 1945. While the existing literature has often focused on specific aspects of Amery’s politics, this thesis tries to describe how those elements interacted within his wider world view. Since he was deeply involved in the transformation of British imperialism and Conservatism in the first half of the twentieth century, the case study will serve to gain more sophisticated understanding of the process of the change.
During his lifetime, British Conservatives came to terms with the rise of mass democracy. Unlike their ideological counterparts in Europe, they marginalized or accommodated radical political ideologies in the 1930s. In the same period, British imperial rhetoric was liberalized or internationalized. The Dominions was reconceptualized as equal partners of the UK in the British Commonwealth. The British government endorsed the constitutional reforms in the dependent colonies, and ultimately decolonization in those regions. Amery reluctantly and opportunistically approved of these changes. By contrast, he was tenaciously committed to the cause of Tariff Reform throughout his political career. This thesis argues that his consistency and inconsistency were two sides of the same coin. His acceptance of the principle of democracy and the devolutions the imperial peripheries pose several questions to Amery: how to prevent democracy from degenerating into irresponsible rule by majority, how to implement social reform for the mass electorate without resorting to socialistic confiscation of the wealth, and how to retain imperial unity when the centrifugal tendencies were strengthened in the Empire/Commonwealth. In his world view, imperial preference was supposed to solve all these questions by spreading the sense of duty among citizens, expanding the economy and populations on an imperial scale, and creating a common economic interest in the Empire/Commonwealth. | en_GB |
