Skip to main content

Arthur Neville Chamberlain Biography

Arthur Neville Chamberlain

(Birmingham, 1869-Heckfield, 1940) British Conservative politician who was Prime Minister between 1937 and 1940.He was the son of Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914), leader of the Liberals « unionists' who joined the Conservative Party and one of the country's most influential politicians in the late 19th century; his half-brother Joseph Austen Chamberlain (1863-1937) also devoted himself to politics, becoming president of the House of Commons, minister on multiple occasions and fleeting head of the Conservative Party.

Neville Chamberlain

Neville Chamberlain, on the other hand, turned into politics belatedly, having gone into business.He was elected mayor of Birmingham in 1915 (his father had already distinguished himself in that position in 1873-1876).His political prestige was forged at the head of the Ministry of Health (1924-1929); the social reform that he introduced in the British health system consolidated the new populist image of the Conservative Party, which had begun to be built with his father's admission to it.Then he was Minister of Finance in the middle of the world economic depression (1931-1937), to which he responded by adopting protectionist measures.

Finally, in 1937 he got the post of prime minister, which he would keep until 1940.He personally handled foreign policy affairs, in a line of appeasement ( appeasement ) with which he hoped safeguard the peace by offering some concessions to Hitler's expansionist ambitions; This policy culminated in the Munich Conference of 1938, which allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland.

Only after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia did Chamberlain realize his mistake and hastily rectify it, hastening British rearmament for the war to come.He then agreed with France to guarantee the integrity of Poland and, consistent with this commitment, declared war on Germany when Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland (September 1939).

Thus started World War II, Chamberlain was just as clumsy in directing military operations as he had been in previous diplomatic relations; his own party replaced him with Winston Churchill, whom Chamberlain maintained his support from the presidency of the Council of State.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jose Mauri Biography

José Mauri (Valencia, 1856-Havana, 1937) Spanish composer.Installed in Cuba for most of his life, he founded the conservatory that bears his name there (1914).His work includes numerous songs and the opera The Slave (1921).

Joseph Reinach Biography

Joseph Reinach (Paris, 1856-1921) French journalist.He started in the journalistic profession through the Parisian newspaper La République Française , where from 1877 he began to publish interesting political analyzes that placed him at the epicenter of French public life in the last quarter of the century XIX.He acquired such importance in such a short space of time that in 1881, following the proclamation in France of the Third Republic, President León Gambetta called him to his side to place all his trust in him and appoint him head of his secretariat. At only thirty years old (1886), he became editor-in-chief of La République Française .Once this position was released, he directed a noisy journalistic campaign from the pages of the newspaper against the nationalist and populist politics of Georges Boulanger (the " General Revanche ").With this and other similar matters of maximum national interest, Joseph Reinach continued to rise in French public life and, in 188...

Joseph H. Maclagan Wedderburn Biography

Joseph H.Maclagan Wedderburn (Forfar, 1882-Princeton, 1948) British mathematician.Professor at Princeton University, he was editor of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh mathematical society (1905-1909) and the Annals of mathematics (1912-1928).He stated a theorem ( Wedderburn's theorem ) according to which every finite field is commutative.

Jose Maria Sanchez-Silva Biography

José María Sánchez-Silva (José María Sánchez-Silva and García-Morales; Madrid, 1911-2002) Spanish writer.He studied journalism at the El Debate School, linked to the Catholic Church, and soon became one of the young journalists who, during the 1940s, became champions of the Falangist ideology and the interests of the ecclesiastical hierarchy..His signature began to reach a certain resonance among the pages of the newspaper Arriba, the visible head of the official press, in which he was to hold the post of deputy director in 1949.He also displayed intense journalistic activity in other media related to his conservative ideology , like the Catholic newspaper Ya and the monarchic ABC. José María Sánchez-Silva After a series of narratives that went unnoticed, in 1953 he published Marcelino Pan and Vino , a novel that tells the story of an orphan boy who, taken in and raised by a community of friars, establishes a particular friendship relationship with an image of Christ crucified,...

Alexandr Izvolski Biography

Alexandr Izvolski (Moscow, 1856-Paris, 1919) Russian politician and diplomat, main architect of the alliance between Russia and England in the years before the First World War. Alexandr Izvolski Educated at the Imperial Lyceum in Saint Petersburg, he soon held important diplomatic posts: he was Russian ambassador to the Vatican, Yugoslavia, Germany, Japan and Denmark.Between 1906 and 1910 he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs; after that he was appointed ambassador to France. In 1907, Izvolski signed a pact that strengthened the alliance between France and England against Germany.Thanks to this pact, the British and the Russians divided Persia, which was divided into three zones of influence: a British, a Russian and a neutral zone between the two (Afghanistan was under the protection of Great Britain).This pact, together with the Franco-Russian alliance of 1890 and the Anglo-French agreement of 1904, formed the embryo of what would later become the Triple Entente. In Oct...

José María Plans and Freire Biography

José María Plans y Freire (José María Plans y Freyre or Freire; Barcelona, ​​1878-Madrid, 1934) Spanish scientist.After studying physical-mathematical sciences at the University of Barcelona, ​​Plans y Freyre completed a doctorate in Madrid.In 1905 he obtained by opposition the chair of physics and chemistry at the Castellón de la Plana Institute of Secondary Education, and in 1909 the chair of rational mechanics at the University of Zaragoza. He stayed in this city until 1917, to hold the chair of cosmography and physics of the globe, and also gave a series of lectures on thermodynamics, gathered in a book entitled Lessons in thermodynamics (1913).In 1917, Plans y Freyre obtained the chair of celestial mechanics at the University of Madrid and in the academic year 1917-1918 he joined together with José Gabriel Álvarez Ude in the laboratory and mathematical seminar of the Board for Expansion of Studies, directed by Julio Rey Pastor, as a collaborator and research director. The...

Angel Fole Biography

Ánxel Fole (Ánxel Fole Sánchez; Lugo, 1903-1986) Spanish narrator and playwright in Galician language.Belonging, along with Álvaro Cunqueiro and Rafael Dieste, to a generation of Galician writers trained before the Civil War, Fole chose not to go into exile after the war and was subjected to a total internal ostracism. Ánxel Fole He began studies of philosophy and letters and law in Valladolid and Madrid, but abandoned both careers.He began to publish in the Lugo newspaper La Provincia (1927) and later collaborated in El Pueblo Gallego, in which his first article in Galician (1934) would appear and began his journalistic series Andar y ver .During the Second Republic he intervened in politics; He was vice president of the Lugo Grouping of the Republican Party and later militated in the Galician Party.At the same time he directed the literary page of Guión, wrote in Resol and founded Yunque, magazines that disappeared at the beginning of the Civil War (1936-1939). In...

Joseph Bramah Biography

Joseph Bramah (Stainborough, 1749-London, 1814) British inventor.A mechanic by profession, he carried out numerous practical inventions: a security lock, a hydraulic press, the water-closet or toilet system, a printer to number banknotes, etc.

José Palet de Rubí Biography

José Palet de Rubí (José Palet Riba; Rubí, 1845- id. , 1908) Spanish republican guerrilla.He took part in the Baldrich uprising of 1867 and, two years later, in the revolt against the fifths.After the revolution of 1868, he was a provincial deputy and mayor of Rubí (1869-1873).After the uprising of General Pavía, he participated in the republican uprising against Martínez Campos, until, defeated in Sarriá, he retired from politics.On April 19, 1907, he defended A.Lerroux with arms when his house was harassed by supporters of Solidaritat Catalana. Son of a liberal mayor and linked to the progressive movement since 1866, in August of 1867 took part in the pronouncement, led by the military and politician Gabriel Baldrich y Palau, of the progressives and democrats of Catalonia and Aragon against Isabel II in Tarragona, which failed due to lack of resources and support. In 1869, he participated in the uprising against the fifths, managing to raise about 1,500 combatants who soon jo...