Synopses & Reviews
This is the story of Philip Kerr and a group of Oxford graduates that founded The Round Table (Journal of International AffairS≪/i>) in 1910 and influenced British foreign policy over the following thirty years. As the principal thinker of the group, Kerr saw the need for a supra-national grouping and wanted to organize the British Empire into a federal superstate. The group also sought an Anglo-American alliance, and in 1939, joined a world federation movement that would help to inspire NATO after the war.
Important questions raised by this group remain relevant today. Can a supra-national community impose laws and regulations on its members without its governing institutions being more fully accountable to a community-wide electorate? Can hostile nationalism be tamed with such a union. Can it reasonably exclude the United States?
Review
"Billington's study, thoroughly informed by the Lothian papers, builds effectively on the wide corpus of recent scholarship, offering incisive judgements while mobilizing some new evidence on lingering controversies. In short, this is now the political biography to read on Lothian, whose career touched on many of Britian's central imperial and international engagements in the first half of the twentieth century." - The International History Review
Synopsis
This is the story of Philip Kerr and a group of Oxford graduates that founded The Round Table (Journal of International Affairs) in 1910, and influenced British foreign policy over the following thirty years. As the principal thinker of the group, Kerr saw the need for a supra-national grouping and wanted to organize the British Empire into a federal superstate. The group also sought an Anglo-American alliance, and in 1939, joined a world federation movement that would help to inspire NATO after the war. Important questions raised by this group remain relevant today. Can a supra-national community impose laws and regulations on its members without its governing institutions being more fully accountable to a community-wide electorate? Can hostile nationalism be tamed with such a union. Can it reasonably exclude the United States?
Synopsis
Explores how Philip Kerr and a small group of Oxford graduates influenced British foreign policy in the early twentieth century.
Synopsis
Philip Kerr was among a group of Oxford graduates that founded The Round Table (Journal of International Affairs) in 1910 and influenced British foreign policy over the following thirty years. Kerr, as the principal thinker of the group, saw the need for a supra-national grouping and he wanted to organize the British Empire into a federal superstate. The group also sought an Anglo-American alliance, and in 1939 joined a world federation movement that would help to inspire NATO after the war.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Proving Grounds
The Round Table Crusade, 1909-1914
The First World War and After, 1914-1921
Renewed Hopes, 1921-1930
Appeasement, 1930-1939
Ambassador, 1939-1940