Birmingham's Ambassador to America: George Dawson
In 1874, Birmingham’s most famous politician, Joseph Chamberlain sent George Dawson across the Atlantic as ‘Birmingham’s Ambassador to America’ – almost as if Birmingham were a cultural power in its own right. Dawson went down a storm in America, and his trip was enthusiastically reported back home. But Dawson’s embassy to America has since been almost entirely forgotten in Birmingham and in the United States.
Now the ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project has started to uncover the traces. In this the first of two History West Midlands podcasts, the Director of the ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project, Professor Ewan Fernie, and the project’s American champion, Professor Katherine Scheil of the University of Minnesota, piece the story together for the Publisher of History West Midlands, Mike Gibbs. They talk about where Dawson went, who he spoke to, what he talked about, what he thought of America and Americans, and what they thought of him.
It is a story which begins to unlock a forgotten and special relationship between Birmingham and America at a time when each was working out its own distinctive relationship to ‘establishment’ British culture.
The ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project is a major lottery-funded collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council. Dawson founded the world’s first great Shakespeare Library in the city in 1864 and the project aims to unlock that pioneering public resource for all the citizens of contemporary Birmingham and to recover the ‘everything to everybody’ ethos it embodies. To get involved and for more podcasts, articles, films, please see the project website: https://everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk/. Follow us on Twitter @E2EShakespeare.
Keywords: George Dawson, Everything to Everybody, Professor Ewan Fernie, Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham
Featuring:
Professor Ewan Fernie
In: Birmingham, Shakespeare, Everything to Everybody, Ewan Fernie, George Dawson,
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