Civil society centenaries, 2009-10: W. David McIntyre provides some reflections on the aims and work of institutes of international affairs.

• Author: McIntyre, W. David

Some interesting and important questions were asked at the NZIIA Christchurch branch AGM about the aims and endeavours of the NZIIA and the status of its publications. Four centenaries that will be celebrated in the near future are of relevance to some of the questions raised during that discussion.

The first was the appointment, in 1909, of James Hight as professor of history at Canterbury University College. He later became principal of the college and the university library is now named after him. Secondly, came the founding of the Round Table movement. At 'Plas Newydd', the home of Lord Angelsey, at an idyllic spot overlooking the Menai Strait in North Wales, with distant views of Snowdonia, Lord Milner met with ten members of his 'kindergarten' during the weekend of 4-6 September 1909. These young Oxford graduates had been recruited into the public service in South Africa following the Boer War. After contributing to the creation of the Union of South Africa, they returned to Britain determined to work for the unity of the wider British Empire.

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They took the name 'Round Table' to symbolise the principles of equality and Anglo-Saxonism and constituted themselves a 'Moot' to publish a quarterly journal of the same name, with corresponding Round Table groups in the Dominions to provide local reports for the journal. Their aim was to foster Empire unity in face of the contemporary German naval challenge. They argued that Britain was 'numerically inferior' to Germany. It was necessary to bring in the strength of the Dominions to redress the balance. The aim was stated as 'an organic union to be brought about by the establishment of an imperial government constitutionally responsible to all the electors of the Empire and with powers to act directly on the individual citizens'. (1)

This movement became the first strand in the background to the NZIIA. The second was the foundation of Chatham House, and the third was the creation of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). All three of these movements created branches in New Zealand and there was considerable overlapping of personnel until, in 1934, the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs was founded.

Fiery prophet

Much of the missionary work of the Round Table was conducted by Lionel Curtis, known as the 'fiery prophet' of the movement. As well as his many influential writings, he excelled in persuading rich men to lend their support. He was also involved in two events in 1910 which are the other two centenaries now being prepared for. Firstly, Curtis spent eleven weeks in New Zealand, where he founded Round Table groups, the first in Christchurch, where Professor Hight was the secretary. (At first they called themselves the 'Imperial Federation Group'. Part of their archive is now in the Macmillan Brown Library.) Curtis loved his days in New Zealand and wrote home that it was 'like a fragment snipped off the southern counties of England'. (2)

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Secondly, the first issue of The Round Table quarterly came out in November 1910. The journal continues to this day, except for a break in publication during 1981-83. Articles were anonymous until 1966. It then became like other refereed academic journals, with the addition of invited articles and very useful documentation, and there are now five issues a year.

Many ironies

There are many ironies arising from the Round Table movement. It never satisfactorily defined 'organic union'. It could never agree on a scheme of union or federation that was practicable, and, by the 1920s, that dream had all but faded. Yet the movement was very influential. It helped popularise the title 'Commonwealth'. Round Tablers pioneered the idea of self-government outside the Dominions and the concept of the multi-racial Commonwealth. The membership of the Moot was always very small, never more than a couple of dozen in its heyday, but it included some people who moved in very high places. Alex May, the current secretary of the Moot, has suggested that the supreme irony is that a movement founded to strengthen the Empire made its most lasting achievement

in helping to smooth, the Empire's end. (3) The Moot continues as the editorial board of the journal. There are now 50 members, including two New Zealanders: Sir Ken Keith, a former Director of NZIIA and, until he became a member of the International Court, the National President, and Ngaire Woods, Professor of International Political Economy at Oxford University.

Commonwealth principle

Lionel Curtis, one of the main ideas men of the original Round Table, was considerably influenced by another Round Tablet, Alfred Zimmern, who published The Greek Commonwealth in 1911, and later was the first to use the style 'British Commonwealth of Nations'. (4) Zimmern wrote of the principles of the Greek city state; Curtis wanted to apply these principles to international relations. Writing on 'the principle of the Commonwealth', he defined it as 'entrusting sovereignty to all of those whose sense of duty to their fellow citizens is strong enough to justify that trust'. (5)

The Round Tablers had a very elevated view of democracy and the role of citizens in affairs, the role of what today we refer to as civil society. They also had a very high regard for Australia and New Zealand as pioneer democracies. It is worth noting that in recent years a group has been revived in Australia known as CRTA, the 'Commonwealth Round Table Group Australia', headed by former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

Second strand

Curtis was also involved in the second strand in our background, the founding of Chatham House. He was a member of the British delegation to the peace conference at Versailles in 1919, where he made contact with kindred spirits among the Wilsonian idealists of the US delegation. The centre-piece of the 'Fourteen Points' outlining US war aims were the ideals of self-determination for peoples and the formation of a League of Nations. Curtis and these like-minded delegates were dismayed by public apathy about their great ideals and sheer lack of information about international affairs. Curtis...