Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis - by Kevin Ruane & Matthew Jones (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In the spring of 1954, after eight years of bitter fighting, the war in Vietnam between the French and the communist-led Vietminh came to a head. With French forces reeling, the United States planned to intervene militarily to shore-up the anti-communist position. Turning to its allies for support, first and foremost Great Britain, the US administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower sought to create what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called a "united action" coalition. In the event, Winston Churchill's Conservative government refused to back the plan. Fearing that US-led intervention could trigger a wider war in which the United Kingdom would be the first target for Soviet nuclear attack, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, was determined to act as Indochina peacemaker - even at the cost of damage to the Anglo-American "special relationship".

In this important study, Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones revisit a Cold War episode in which British diplomacy played a vital role in settling a crucial question of international war and peace. Eden's diplomatic triumph at the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina is often overshadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis which led to his political downfall. This book, however, recalls an earlier Eden: a skilled and experienced international diplomatist at the height of his powers who may well have prevented a localised Cold War crisis escalating into a general Third World War.

Review Quotes

"The authors offer a brilliant, sophisticated account of Eden's diplomacy during the Indochina Crisis, which most British and American scholars consider a crucial turning point in the Cold War." --Michigan War Studies Review

"Written in a style accessible to both scholars and a broader audience interested in the history of the Cold War and crisis management ... [A] timely and excellent monograph." --Diplomacy & Statescraft

"[The] definitive study on the subject of Eden and Indochina." --A Blog on Winston Churchill

"A lively and incisive account by two of Britain's leading international historians, this book sheds new light on many aspects of the 1954 Indochina crisis but, most importantly, draws a close link between Anthony Eden's successful diplomacy and the looming danger of thermo-nuclear war." --John W. Young, Professor of History, University of Nottingham, UK

"Kevin Ruane and Matthew Jones have written a meticulously researched and eminently readable account of arguably the high-point of British influence in the so-called Anglo-American "special relationship" during the Cold War, when Anthony Eden played a vital part in preventing a possible world conflict." --Geoffrey Warner, Professor of Modern History and Former Fellow at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, UK

"Anthony Eden, Anglo-American Relations and the 1954 Indochina Crisis brilliantly upends the view of Eisenhower and Dulles as responsible stewards of nuclear weapons. Comprehensively researched and elegantly written, it convincingly argues that Anthony Eden's shrewd and heroic efforts at the 1954 Geneva Conference saved the world from the war that the unbridled nuclear adventurism and brinksmanship of the Eisenhower administration was likely to cause." --Martin J. Sherwin, University Professor at George Mason University, is author (with Kai Bird) of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, recipient of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize

About the Author

Kevin Ruane is Professor of Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Matthew Jones is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK