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On the Chatham House project: interwar actors, networks, knowledge

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Abstract

It was the consensus of the Anglo-American policy intellectuals gathered in Paris in 1919 that new actors, new institutions, and new networks were required to deal with the disruption caused by the Great War. The post-1919 re/construction of international society was thus an attempt to identify and frame interests, rules and institutions that would provide the foundations for an ordered world of states. This emerging policy elite argued the case for new institutions to manage international affairs, and advocated educating the citizenry of the more advanced nations to accept the responsibilities implicit in the idea of an ‘international mind’. A cautious institutional liberalism was to replace the unaccountable rulers and foreign policy elites of the previous era; ‘international relations’ as an academic discipline was required to provide the technical knowledge needed for policy conceptualisation and formation. The Chatham House network flourished between the wars, transforming the way foreign policy was formulated, understood and practiced.

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Notes

  1. C. Jones, C. The Origin of Chatham House, 1958, typescript: RIIA Archive 2/1/2A, p. 2.

  2. L. Curtis remarks, 30 May 1919, typescript of proceedings: RIIA Archive 2/1/2.

  3. L. Curtis and W. Shepardson Memorandum, June 1919: RIIA Archive 2/1/2. See also Williams (2003a, b).

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  1. Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, ADFA, Canberra, Australia

    James Cotton

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Cotton, J. On the Chatham House project: interwar actors, networks, knowledge. Int Polit 55, 820–835 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-017-0100-6

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