Chatham House and Africa c1920?1960: The Limitations of the Curtis Vision

The Chatham House project entailed the building of institutions in the Anglo-American world devoted to greater public enlightenment on questions of foreign policy, led by a liberal and networked elite. In the British dominions, problems of geography and dispersed populations proved obstacles to institution building. In South Africa, divisions within the European population no less than racial exclusion constrained the early activities of the South African Institute of International Affairs. Lionel Curtis, having been strongly associated with the movement to achieve political union in South Africa, was unable to confront the inconsistency manifest in building an institution devoted to engage and mould public opinion from which the concerns of much of the public were excluded. After Hailey's African Survey, Chatham House eventually sponsored the Institute of Race Relations in London which increasingly focussed on the regional and Commonwealth instabilities generated by exclusionary regimes. The appearance of a short-lived East African manifestation of Chatham House was the final instalment in the implementation of the old model of organisation; the establishment of the Nigerian Institute was a portent of future developments.