INTRODUCTION

One of the shortest periods of service of any secretary of state for foreign affairs is that held by the Conservative politician, Sir Samuel Hoare, who only took charge of the Foreign Office between June and December of 1935. His brief time in office was dominated by one issue above all others, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia and it was his cynical attempt with his French counterpart, Pierre Laval, to find a compromise solution to that crisis that led to his rapid downfall. Hoare's name is thus rarely associated with Japan, but in his months as foreign secretary he did make decisions about British policy towards East Asia that were to have significant implications for the future. Moreover, in assessing his influence on Anglo-Japanese relations it is important to remember that Hoare had an extensive ministerial career in the 1930s aside from his unhappy time at the Foreign Office. Between 1931 and 1935 he was the secretary of state for India, acted as the first lord of the Admiralty in 1936–37 and went on to become home secretary between 1937 and 1939. In each of these jobs, both as a minister and as a trusted confidant of the prime minister, he exercised some influence on British policy towards Japan. Indeed, it would not be going too far to see him as an exemplar of how Conservatives thought that Britain ought to interact with its erstwhile ally. In this regard, it is notable that Shigemitsu Mamoru, the Japanese ambassador to London between 1938 and 1941, classified him as one of the ‘orthodox Tories’.

When the National Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald formed a coalition government with his Conservative and Liberal allies in August 1931, he was forced to distribute the prize positions in the Cabinet with a careful eye on the balance between the parties. One of the most important non-economic posts was the India Office where a project of major constitutional reform for the Raj was in the offing, following the Simon Commission report of 1930. This was a controversial issue in British politics, for some Conservatives were opposed to reform on principle, while others feared that any move towards greater Indian fiscal and tariff autonomy would have a deleterious effect on British trade.