Abstract
This book presents a radical new interpretation of Anglo-American relations and British policy during the First World War. Drawing together economics, foreign policy, and intelligence history, it makes the case that Britain came far closer to seeking peace in late 1916 and early 1917 than has traditionally been recognised. It charts the course of American proposals for peace and British reactions to them. It argues that Britain's strategic position, and in particular its financial position, was far weaker than historians have usually acknowledged. For this reason, Larsen argues that leading figures in the British government were receptive to American overtures and that there was a realistic prospect of peace in late 1916. He argues that the failure of such proposals can be put down to political interference by certain individuals within the British intelligence community. British control of global communications meant that codebreakers had access to much of what the Americans in London were sending back to Washington. The argument put forward is that service personnel, most notably the Director, Intelligence Division at the Admiralty, Captain Reginald Hall, used information gained from decrypts to sabotage American peace efforts.
Plotting for Peace is unashamedly revisionist in its outlook. Larsen contends that previous historians have ignored the economic constraints on the British war effort, misunderstood the choices in front of British policymakers in 1916, and have left analysis of intelligence out of the picture all together. It is by addressing these lacunae that he is able to rewrite the history of Anglo-American relations and American peacemaking. Larsen is not alone in presenting a radical new interpretation of the prospects of peace in late 1916. Philip Zelikow's The Road Less Travelled: The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916–1917 was published at roughly the same time and makes similar arguments, drawing heavily on Larsen's work.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given its radical conclusions, this book is not a traditional work of international or diplomatic history. Neither the State Department nor the Foreign Office features prominently. Instead, Larsen focuses on the personal diplomacy of Wilson's advisor, Colonel Edward House. He presents this diplomacy as having a far greater coherence and grounded in a much better understanding of the ‘European war’ than has generally been accepted within the historiography. It should, however, be acknowledged that Larsen's account is of House's diplomacy as opposed to American diplomacy more broadly. The Secretaries of State, William Bryan and Robert Lansing, barely feature, and even President Wilson himself makes only fleeting appearances in this account. To tell this story Larsen relies very heavily on House's own diary, which, while hugely valuable to historians, is not without its issues.
Plotting for Peace presents a detailed exploration of British responses to these American peace initiatives, and Larsen exploits a wide range of sources to support his conclusions. His conceptualisation of the peace effort is, however, relatively narrow. The focus is on elite discussions, rather than any wider connection to domestic or foreign policy on either side of the Atlantic. At times this can be a little jarring. For example, there is little engagement with the idea, commonly expressed both at the time and in later historiography, that British receptiveness to American overtures was not always sincere, and may have been driven by the undoubted desire to keep the Americans on the side. Similarly, there is limited discussion of the role of public opinion in either Britain or the United States, both of which would have been crucial in any move towards peace.
The most original contribution of the book comes from its close integration of intelligence history into the wider account of foreign policy and strategy. Much of Larsen's previous research has focused on cryptanalysis and he puts this to good use here. His work highlights the value of decrypts to the conduct of diplomacy (and international history), and also sheds light on the real questions and challenges of using them effectively. As with so much of early British intelligence history, the surviving archival record for codebreaking operations in this period is very limited and the narrative has been pieced together from a wide range of different sources. Larsen should be congratulated for this work, although some of his conclusions, particularly the extent of British reading of American messages and the degree to which it was used to impact policy, will likely be challenged.
The revisionist nature of this book, and the tone in which it is written, will make it a contentious work among historians of the First World War. It is, however, an important study on a comparatively underexplored subject, and Larsen's weaving of economic and intelligence threads into the broader political and diplomatic history adds real value. It is hoped that the book will spark further debate and scholarship on both peacemaking and Anglo-American relations during the First World War.