Norman Angell

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Sir Ralph Norman Angell (26 December 1872 – 7 October 1967) was a lecturer, journalist, author and Member of Parliament<ref name=NA-Angell >National Archives</ref> for the Labour Party. He was awarded the Nobel 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 the Union of Democratic Control. He served on the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the Abyssinia Association. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1931 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref name=nobelprize-Angell >Angell biography, nobelprize.org; retrieved 11 September 2015.</ref>

Angell is most remembered for his 1910 book The Great Illusion, the thesis of which is that the economic 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 of World War I exposed Angell to scholarly and popular derision.

Life and career

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Angell's birthplace on High Street, Holbeach, marked by a blue plaque

Angell was the sixth child born to Thomas Angell Lane and Mary (née Brittain) Lane in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, England.<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/><ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> He was born Ralph Norman Angell Lane, but later adopted Angell as his sole surname.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> He attended several schools in England, the Lycée Alexandre Ribot at Saint-Omer in France,<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/> and the University of Geneva, while editing an English-language newspaper published in Geneva.<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/>

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,<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/> where for several years he worked as a vine planter, an irrigation-ditch digger, a cowboy, a California homesteader (after filing for American citizenship), a mail carrier, a prospector,<ref name=BSU-Angell>Template:Cite web</ref> and then, closer to his natural skills, as a reporter for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and later the San Francisco Chronicle.<ref name="nobelprize-Angell"/>

Due to family matters he returned to England briefly in 1898, then moved to Paris to work as a sub-editor of the English-language Daily Messenger<ref name="BSU-Angell"/> and then as a staff contributor to the newspaper Éclair. Also during this period he acted as French correspondent for some American newspapers, to which he sent dispatches on the progress of the Dreyfus affair.<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/> During 1905–12, he became the Paris editor for the Daily Mail.

He returned to England and, in 1914, co-founded the Union of Democratic Control. He joined the Labour Party in 1920 and was parliamentary candidate for Rushcliffe in the general election of 1922 and for Rossendale in 1923. He was MP for Bradford North from 1929 to 1931; after the formation of the National Government, he announced his decision not to seek reelection on 24 September 1931.<ref>The Times, 25 September 1931, p. 6.</ref> In 1931 he was knighted for his public and political services, and in 1933 he received the Nobel Peace Prize.<ref name= "nobelprize-Angell"/> He stood unsuccessfully for the London University seat in 1935.

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 in Croydon, Surrey.<ref name= "BSU-Angell"/>

He married Beatrice Cuvellier, but they separated and he lived his last 55 years alone. He purchased Northey Island, Essex, which is attached to the mainland only at low tide, and lived in the island's sole dwelling.

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1933 Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to Angell

Angell's Nobel Prize medal was sold at auction at Sotheby's, London, in 1983 for £8,000<ref name="English2005">Template:Cite book</ref> (Template:Inflation), being bought by his nephew, Eric Angell Lane. The medal, with its accompanying scroll, is now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.<ref name='IWM'>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="English2005"/>

The Great Illusion

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Angell is most remembered for his 1909 pamphlet Europe's Optical Illusion, which was published the next year (and many years thereafter) as the book The Great Illusion. (The anti-war film La Grande Illusion took its title from his pamphlet.) The book's thesis is that the economic 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.

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During World War I, British historian and polemicist G. G. Coulton authored a purported refutation of Angell's pamphlet.<ref name=Coulton>Coulton, G.G., The Main Illusions of Pacifism: A Criticism of Mr. Norman Angell and of the Union of Democratic Control, (Cambridge: Bowes & Bowes, 1916) (retrieved November 25, 2022).</ref>

The Money Game

Angell was also the designer of The Money Game, a visual method of teaching schoolchildren the fundamentals of finance and banking. First published in 1928 by J. 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Influence

Angell's book The Press and the Organisation of Society is cited as a source in F. R. Leavis' pamphlet Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture (1930).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Vera Brittain quoted Angell's statement on "the moral obligation to be intelligent" several times in her work.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Works

See also

References

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Further reading

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