Austen Chamberlain

Biography

Austen Chamberlain was a British statesman and the elder son of Joseph Chamberlain. He was educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, then spent time in Paris at Sciences Po and in Berlin, experiences that shaped his later interest in European affairs. He entered Parliament in 1892 as a Liberal Unionist and stayed in the Commons until his death in 1937, joining the Conservatives when the two parties merged in 1912.

He rose quickly in the Unionist governments of the 1890s and 1900s as Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Postmaster General and Chancellor of the Exchequer. During the First World War he was Secretary of State for India, resigning in 1917 over the failures of the Mesopotamia campaign, and he returned under Lloyd George as Chancellor again and then as Lord Privy Seal and leader of the Conservative Party.

His support for the coalition cost him the party leadership after the Carlton Club meeting of 1922. As Foreign Secretary from 1924 to 1929 he negotiated the Locarno treaties, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. He served briefly as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1931, when the Invergordon Mutiny broke out, and spent his last years warning about the rise of Nazi Germany.