Royal Institute of International Affairs
London foreign-policy institute founded 1919–1920 at the Hôtel Majestic; in Quigley's account, the Milner Group's principal public-facing institutional projection
Also known as: RIIA, Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Institute of International Affairs
The Royal Institute of International Affairs — universally known as Chatham House for its headquarters at 10 St. James's Square, London — was organized at a joint meeting of British and American delegates at the Hôtel Majestic in Paris on 30 May 1919, during the Versailles Peace Conference. Quigley devotes the whole of The Anglo-American Establishment Chapter 10 to it. His central claim is unambiguous: "the real founder of the Institute was Lionel Curtis" (AAE 151), and the RIIA was, from its first day, the institutional projection of the Milner Group into the British public sphere — the third of three sister organizations (with the "Closer Union" movement in South Africa and the Round Table) "formed by the same small group of persons" and "all three" of which "received their initial financial backing from Sir Abe Bailey" (AAE 151). Its American sister institution is the Council on Foreign Relations.
Foundation at the Hôtel Majestic, 30 May 1919
Quigley reconstructs the RIIA's origin meticulously in The Anglo-American Establishment. The Institute "was organized at a joint conference of British and American experts at the Hotel Majestic on 30 May 1919. At the suggestion of Lord Robert Cecil, the chair was given to General Tasker Bliss of the American delegation" (AAE 151). The plan was that the new body would have two halves, one in London and one in New York; in the event the American half developed under separate corporate articles as the Council on Foreign Relations, with which Chatham House thereafter maintained "a parallel organization, which was regarded as a branch, in New York" (AAE 158). Quigley emphasises the personal continuity: every figure of consequence at the Majestic meeting — Curtis, Kerr, Cecil, Dawson, Toynbee, Zimmern — was either a Milner-Group member or, in Cecil's case, a member of the parallel Cecil Bloc with which the Milner Group operated as a single working bloc.
The Quigley Framing: A Public Wing for a Private Group
Quigley is explicit about what the Institute was for: "The new organization was intended to be a wider aspect of the Milner Group, the plan being to influence the leaders of thought through The Round Table and to influence a wider group through the RIIA" (AAE 151). The Group's classic two-tier method — an inner society making decisions, an outer body of friends and useful publics carrying the message — was instantiated institutionally. The RIIA's Council was, throughout the inter-war period, between a third and a half Milner-Group: in 1936, "at least eleven out of twenty-six members of the council were of the Milner Group" (AAE 153). The Institute's journal International Affairs, its flagship publication series, and its appendix-of-documents on disarmament, security, the World Court, and reparations (AAE 155) became the principal vehicles through which Group positions reached the educated British public. The chair of the Council in the 1930s was Lord Astor.
Funding and the Round Table Method
Quigley's documentation of the Institute's finances is one of AAE's most devastating passages. The seed money came from Abe Bailey, the diamond financier and protégé of Rhodes. The 1926 appeal pulled in £3,000 from the Carnegie United Kingdom Trustees, £600 from the Bank of England, and £3,000 from J. D. Rockefeller (AAE 157). The 1929 list of pledging corporations reads as a directory of the Anglo-imperial economy: "the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; the Bank of England; Barclay's Bank; Baring Brothers; the British American Tobacco Company; the British South Africa Company; Central Mining and Investment Corporation" — "most of these had one or more members of the Milner Group on their boards of directors" (AAE 157). The Institute's methodology was the same "Round Table method of discussion groups plus a journal" (AAE 151) that the Group had used since 1909 in The Round Table magazine and before that in The State in South Africa.
Toynbee, Zimmern, and the Production of the Establishment Worldview
The Institute's intellectual influence ran through its staff economists and historians. A. J. Toynbee — "nephew of Milner's old friend at Balliol" (AAE 152) — was Director of Studies from 1925 to 1955 and produced the annual Survey of International Affairs, the inter-war world's most consulted analytic chronicle of foreign affairs. Sir Alfred Zimmern ran the parallel Wilson Chair of International Politics at Aberystwyth from 1919, a chair in whose appointment the Institute had a formal voice and which thereafter "has been occupied by close associates of the Group from its foundation" (AAE 156). The Institute thereby gained editorial control over the principal academic chair in the new field of international relations, while its publications — Survey, Documents, and the journal — defined the vocabulary in which the educated Anglo-American public thought about diplomacy from Versailles to Suez.
Chatham House and the American Branch
Quigley's clearest statement of the binational architecture is in AAE 158: "Chatham House had close institutional relations with a number of other similar organizations, especially in the Dominions. It also has a parallel organization, which was regarded as a branch, in New York. This latter, the Council on Foreign Relations, was not founded by the American group that attended the meeting at the Hotel Majestic in 1919, but was taken over almost entirely by that group immediately after its founding in 1919. This group was made up of the experts on the American delegation to the Peace Conference who were most closely associated with J. P. Morgan and Company." The Institute of Pacific Relations (1925) was a third sibling for Pacific-rim affairs. For Quigley, this RIIA–CFR–IPR triangle is the institutional skeleton of the twentieth-century "Anglo-American Establishment" — a documentary claim built from membership lists, funding records, and the Institute's own Annual Reports, not from inference.
Cited in
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 1 Quigley
Chapter 10—The Royal Institute of International Affairs
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 5 Quigley
It has been called 'The Times crowd,' 'the Rhodes crowd,' the 'Chatham House crowd,' the 'All Souls group,' and the 'Cliveden set.'
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 151 Quigley
the real founder of the Institute was Lionel Curtis… The new organization was intended to be a wider aspect of the Milner Group, the plan being to influence the leaders of thought through The Round Table and to influence a wider group through the RIIA.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 151 Quigley
The Institute was organized at a joint conference of British and American experts at the Hotel Majestic on 30 May 1919.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 152 Quigley
The Institute was formed by the Cecil Bloc and the Milner Group, acting together, and the real decisions were being made by members of the latter.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 153 Quigley
In 1936, at least eleven out of twenty-six members of the council were of the Milner Group.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 155 Quigley
The Institute bought out all his information services for £3500 and made them into the Information Department of the Institute.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 156 Quigley
the Institute had a voice in the election of professors to the Wilson Chair of International Politics at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. As a result, this chair has been occupied by close associates of the Group from its foundation.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 157 Quigley
In 1929 pledges were obtained from about a score of important banks and corporations, promising annual grants to the Institute. Most of these had one or more members of the Milner Group on their boards of directors.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 158 Quigley
It also has a parallel organization, which was regarded as a branch, in New York. This latter, the Council on Foreign Relations, was not founded by the American group that attended the meeting at the Hotel Majestic in 1919, but was taken over almost entirely by that group immediately after its founding in 1919.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 951 Quigley
Curtis, L., 133, 138, 142-4, 146-7, 149, 164-6, 167, 170, 174, 581-2, 948, 950-2 (founded Royal Institutes of International Affairs).
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 952 Quigley
[Lippmann was] already a member of the mysterious Round Table group, which has played a major role in directing England's foreign policy since its formal establishment in 1909.