Samuel Hoare

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Samuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount Templewood GCSI GBE CMG (24 February 1880–7 May 1959), more commonly known as Sir Samuel Hoare, was a British Conservative politician who served in various capacities in the Conservative and National governments of the 1920s and 1930s.

Hoare was educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, and was first elected to the House of Commons for Chelsea in 1910. He served in the First World War, and, returning to parliament afterwards, was to become one of the principle Conservatives who revolted against continued participation in the Lloyd George government in 1922. He was rewarded with the position of Secretary of State for Air, which he held in all the various Conservative governments of the 1920s. When the Conservatives joined the National Government in 1931, Hoare became Secretary of State for India in which capacity he negotiated, with great difficulty, the passage of the landmark Government of India Act 1935.

He was, however, most famous for his role as Foreign Secretary in 1935, when he had to deal with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Together with French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, he developed the so-called Hoare-Laval Agreement, which would have granted Italy considerable territorial concessions in Ethiopia, and put the rump of Ethiopia under Italian hegemony. The public uproar against this apparent sell-out of the Ethiopians led to Hoare's resignation as Foreign Secretary at the end of the year. Nevertheless, Hoare continued to serve in important posts in later governments. Upon Winston Churchill's appointment as Prime Minister in 1940, Hoare lost his cabinet position and was sent off as Ambassador to Spain. In this role he sought to encourage Francisco Franco to keep Spain out of the war, in which he was successful. He remained Ambassador until 1944 when he returned to Britain and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Templewood. The title became extinct upon his death in 1959.

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