Earl Grey’s Public Diplomacy

• Main Author: Bowman, Stephen
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2018
• Subjects: Canada; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417815.003.0004

This chapter focuses on the banquet held by the New York branch of the Pilgrims Society in March 1906 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for Earl Grey, the Governor General of Canada. This dinner provides a case study of the ways in which the Society served as a network for British and American diplomats and provides one of the clearest examples of its public diplomacy activities. The banquet was held during a dispute between Britain, Canada, and the United States over fishing rights in the North Atlantic and the speeches given at the dinner by Earl Grey and Elihu Root, the US Secretary of State, were designed to mobilise public opinion in an effort to bring the dispute to an amicable end. Part of this public diplomacy effort was Earl Grey’s heavily-publicised gift to the US of a portrait of Benjamin Franklin that had been in his family’s possession since the American Revolution. The rhetoric surrounding this gift provides evidence about the cultural assumptions underpinning the Pilgrims’ public and cultural diplomacy.