Sir Ralph Norman Angell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of Parliament forBradford North | |
| In office 30 May 1929 – 7 October 1931 | |
| Preceded by | Eugene Ramsden |
| Succeeded by | Eugene Ramsden |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Ralph Norman Angell Lane (1872-12-26)26 December 1872 Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England |
| Died | 7 October 1967(1967-10-07) (aged 94) Croydon, Surrey, England |
| Occupation | lecturer, journalist, author, politician |
| Known for | Nobel Peace Prize (1933) |
Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 – 7 October 1967) was a lecturer, journalist, author andMember of Parliament[1] for theLabour Party. He was awarded theNobel Peace Prize for his efforts to promote peace, particularly through writings that argued that modern economic interdependence made war irrational and self-defeating.
Angell was one of the principal founders of theUnion of Democratic Control. He served on the Council of theRoyal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for theWorld Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of theLeague of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was made aKnight Bachelor in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933.[2][3]
Angell is most remembered for his 1910 bookThe Great Illusion, the thesis of which is that theeconomic integration of the European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete. Angell was frequently misunderstood at the time, and afterward, as claiming that a general European war was impossible. Because of this widespread misunderstanding, the advent ofWorld War I exposed Angell to scholarly and popular derision.
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Angell was the sixth child born to Thomas Angell Lane and Mary (née Brittain) Lane inHolbeach, Lincolnshire, England.[3][4] He was bornRalph Norman Angell Lane, but later adoptedAngell as his sole surname.[5] He attended several schools in England, theLycée Alexandre Ribot atSaint-Omer in France,[3] and theUniversity of Geneva, while editing an English-language newspaper published inGeneva.[3]
In Geneva, Angell felt that Europe was "hopelessly entangled in insoluble problems". Then, still only 17, he emigrated to the West Coast of the United States,[3] where for several years he worked as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowboy, a Californiahomesteader (after filing for American citizenship), a mail carrier, aprospector,[6] and then, closer to his natural skills, as a reporter for theSt. Louis Globe-Democrat and later theSan Francisco Chronicle.[3]
Due to family matters he returned to England briefly in 1898, then moved to Paris to work as a sub-editor of the English-languageDaily Messenger[6] and then as a staff contributor to the newspaperÉclair. Also during this period he acted as French correspondent for some American newspapers, to which he sent dispatches on the progress of theDreyfus affair.[3] During 1905–12, he became the Paris editor for theDaily Mail.
He returned to England and, in 1914, co-founded theUnion of Democratic Control. He joined the Labour Party in 1920 and was parliamentary candidate forRushcliffe in thegeneral election of 1922 and forRossendale in1923. He was MP forBradford North from 1929 to 1931; after the formation of theNational Government, he announced his decision not to seek reelection on 24 September 1931.[7] In 1931 he wasknighted for his public and political services, and in 1933 he received theNobel Peace Prize.[3] He stood unsuccessfully for theLondon University seat in1935.
From the mid-1930s, Angell actively campaigned for collective international opposition to the aggressive policies of Germany, Italy, and Japan. He went to the United States in 1940 to lecture in favour of American support for Britain in World War II, and remained there until after the publication of his autobiography in 1951. He later returned to Britain and died at the age of 94 inCroydon, Surrey.[6]
He married Beatrice Cuvellier, but they separated and he lived his last 55 years alone. He purchasedNorthey Island, Essex, which is attached to the mainland only at low tide, and lived in the island's sole dwelling.
Angell'sNobel Prize medal was sold at auction atSotheby's, London, in 1983 for £8,000[8] (equivalent to £34,097 in 2023), being bought by his nephew, Eric Angell Lane. The medal, with its accompanying scroll, is now in the collection of theImperial War Museum.[9][8]
Angell is most remembered for his 1909 pamphletEurope's Optical Illusion, which was published the next year (and many years thereafter) as the bookThe Great Illusion. (The anti-war filmLa Grande Illusion took its title from his pamphlet.) The book's thesis is that theeconomic integration of the European countries had grown to such a degree that war between them would be entirely futile, making militarism obsolete. This quotation from the "Synopsis" to the popular 1913 edition summarizes his basic argument.
He establishes this apparent paradox, in so far as the economic problem is concerned, by showing that wealth in the economically civilized world is founded upon credit and commercial contract (these being the outgrowth of an economic interdependence due to the increasing division of labour and greatly developed communication). If credit and commercial contract are tampered with in an attempt at confiscation, the credit-dependent wealth is undermined, and its collapse involves that of the conqueror; so that if conquest is not to be self-injurious it must respect the enemy’s property, in which case it becomes economically futile. Thus the wealth of conquered territory remains in the hands of the population of such territory. When Germany annexed Alsace, no individual German secured a single mark’s worth of Alsatian property as the spoils of war. Conquest in the modern world is a process of multiplying by x, and then obtaining the original figure by dividing by x. For a modern nation to add to its territory no more adds to the wealth of the people of such nation than it would add to the wealth of Londoners if the City of London were to annex the county of Hertford.[10]
During World War I, British historian and polemicistG. G. Coulton authored a purported refutation of Angell's pamphlet.[11]
Angell was also the designer ofThe Money Game, a visual method of teaching schoolchildren the fundamentals of finance and banking. First published in 1928 byJ. M. Dent & Sons,The Money Game, How to Play It: A New Instrument of Economic Education was both a book and a game. The bulk of the book was an essay on money and a discussion of economic theory. It also contained a summary of the game's story and an explanation of the rules.[12]
Angell's bookThe Press and the Organisation of Society is cited as a source inF. R. Leavis' pamphletMass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1930).[13]Vera Brittain quoted Angell's statement on "the moral obligation to be intelligent" several times in her work.[14]
Notes
Further reading
, accessed 28 April 2020 including the Nobel Lecture, 12 June 1935Peace and the Public Mind
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forBradford North 1929–1931 | Succeeded by |
