January 24th, 1907
A reader asks what Winston Churchill was doing on 24 January 1907.
Churchill was at the Colonial Office, London, dealing with an upcoming Colonial conference, and a diplomatic kerfuffle. The Governor of Jamaica, Sir James Alexander Swettenham, had churlishly demanded that the crew of an American warship, landed in Kingston to lend humanitarian assistance after a serious earthquake, retire to their ship, suggesting that the Americans’ action was like a visiting “British admiral landing an armed party to support the New York police.”
On January 24th Churchill advised King Edward VII that, acting on a telegram from Lord Elgin, the Colonial Secretary (who was in Scotland), Swettenham had been rebuked and ordered to apologize to the Americans.…