Watkinson, Patricia Ferguson, Empire’s Champion; Leo Amery and the Imperial Idea 1900-1945, PhD thesis, University of Virginia 2001. Brief summary.

“This is a study of Leo Amery, a British Conservative statesman and the leading proponent of the "New Imperialism" during the first half of the twentieth century. Amery's career in Parliament spanned the major events in the British Empire from 1900 until his retirement in 1945…. In the 1920s he served as First Lord of the Admiralty and then as Colonial and Dominions Secretary of State, all of which were considered "imperial" offices. As Dominions Secretary he helped to generate the Statute of Westminster as a new pattern for imperial relationships. Amery left the cabinet when the government fell in 1929 and did not join any governments in the 1930s…. Finally, as Secretary of State for India in Winston Churchill's war cabinet (1940-45), he charted the course for the transfer of power in 1947…. All of Amery's attitudes and political actions sprang from a world view which he championed throughout his political life, although this often put him at odds with his own party's leadership. Influenced by Seeley and Parkin, Amery saw the British Empire as a Greater Britain, one entity divided by bodies of water, and to that vision he gave his complete allegiance. He searched constantly for a vehicle that would effectively promote imperial unity throughout the empire and commonwealth. During his career he attempted to use military reform, imperial federation, and economic integration as methods to promote imperial unity, and to create such bonds of mutual cooperation that political union would inevitably occur. Amery left a great legacy of cooperation and development within the imperial context. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful in his goal of imperial union, he wielded great influence at certain points, and his career creates an opportunity through which to study attempts to adapt both Conservatism and imperialism to twentieth-century political and economic life.” From the abstract.

The final chapter (pp. 304 ff.) covers Amery’s period as Secretary of State for India.