Sir Ronald Lindsay

Ronald Charles Lindsay (1877–1945) served in several European and Middle Eastern posts before becoming Britain’s ambassador in Washington. He was under-secretary of finance in Egypt from 1913 to 1919 and then served at the Washington embassy as counselor and chargé d’affaires. In September 1919 he joined Robert Lansing and Canadian representative John Douglas Hazen in signing a convention intended to protect Pacific salmon fisheries. The proposed agreement provided for coordinated fishing rules and an international commission to study the fishery; it was subsequently withdrawn from the United States Senate. ^{1, 2, 3}

After serving in Paris and as an assistant under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Lindsay became ambassador to Turkey and then Germany. He returned to London as permanent under-secretary, the Foreign Office’s senior civil servant, in 1928. His Washington ambassadorship began in 1930 and lasted nine years. Both his marriages were to Americans: Martha Cameron, who died in 1918, and Elizabeth Sherman Hoyt, whom he married in 1924. ^{1, 4, 5}

Commercial negotiations occupied a substantial part of his later American service. On 17 November 1938 he and Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed a reciprocal trade agreement at the White House after six months of negotiations. It covered Britain, Northern Ireland, Newfoundland, and the British colonial empire. A Canadian agreement was signed at the same ceremony. ⁶

Lindsay also pressed against restrictions on Indian merchants in the United States. In May 1938 he explained that merchants excluded from permanent immigration could not sustain their businesses through temporary admission limited to eighteen months. He asked whether a reciprocal trading arrangement could provide them with a more workable status. In April 1939 his embassy concluded an exchange of notes establishing joint British and American control of Canton and Enderbury Islands for fifty years, supporting the development of transpacific commercial aviation while reserving each government’s sovereignty claims. ^{7, 8}

His final months at the embassy included the visit of George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the royal garden party in June 1939. He had already sought retirement, and the appointment of Lord Lothian as his successor was announced that spring. Lindsay died in August 1945. ^{9, 5, 1}