page_title: James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
section_title: Ambassador to the United States
hierarchical_section_title: James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce / Ambassador to the United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Middleton in-law Viscount Bryce (far left) beside Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (died 1942), Governor General of Canada - in top hat. 1911 copyright Library of Congress
context_page_description: James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FBA was an Irish-born academic, jurist, historian, and Liberal politician.
context_section_description: However, even this time, Bryce's cabinet post was held only for a brief period because as soon as February 1907, he was appointed British Ambassador to the United States of America. He kept this diplomatic office until 1913 and was very efficient in strengthening Anglo-American ties and friendship. Bryce made many personal friends in American politics such as US President Theodore Roosevelt. The German ambassador in Washington, Graf Heinrich von Bernstorff, later admitted how relieved he felt that Bryce was not his competitor for American sympathies during the World War period even though Bernstorff managed to keep the US from declaring war until 1917.
  As an author, Bryce quickly became well known in America for his 1888 work, The American Commonwealth. The book thoroughly examined the institutions of the United States from the point of view of a historian and constitutional lawyer and at once became a classic. In developing material for his book, Bryce painstakingly reproduced the travels of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote Democracy in America (1835–40). Although Tocqueville emphasized the egalitarian nature of early-19th-century America, Bryce was dismayed to find vast inequality: "Sixty years ago, there were no great fortunes in America, few large fortunes, no poverty. Now there is some poverty... and a greater number of gigantic fortunes than in any other country of the world" and "As respects education... the profusion of…elementary schools tends to raise the mass to a higher point than in Europe... [but] there is an increasing class that has studied at the best universities. It appears that equality has diminished [in this regard] and will diminish further." The work was heavily used in academia as a result of Bryce's close friendships with men such as President James B. Angell of the University of Michigan and successively Charles W. Eliot and Abbott Lawrence Lowell at Harvard. The work also became a key medium for certain Americans to popularise the view of American history as distinctly Anglo-Saxon.
caption: 1911 - The Right Hon. James Bryce (far left) beside Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn the Governor-General of Canada (also wearing top hat)
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