Economic dependence and interdependence: Chatham house and interwar economics

Book section : Chapter

The chapter reveals Chatham House’s growing preoccupation with financial and economic issues from the Institute’s inception until the outbreak of the Second World War. RIIA speakers and members wrestled to understand the implications of the era’s economic and financial turbulence for the new world order. The Institute mobilized European and global networks of knowledge and expertise to explore both the short- and the long-term challenges of capitalist modernity. The issues discussed included cartels, the consumer economy, global inequality and unemployment, pressure on natural resources, and economic forecasting. The coverage of the world, though partial, mostly western, and white, did include women’s voices and was strikingly global. By the early 1930s, a ‘Chatham House view’ emerged that the operations of capitalism were a core concern of international relations, not a side issue, in ways that also informed its response to geopolitical threats, such as the Axis powers and Communism.

Authors: Clavin, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: Chatham House. The First Hundred Years
• Pages: 59-72
• Chapter number: 3
• Place of publication: Oxford |New York
• Publication date: 2026-04-01
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1093/9780198984948.003.0004
• EISBN: 9780198984948
• ISBN: 9780198984962
• Language: English
• Keywords: think tanks; British foreign policy; empire/Commonwealth; Treaty of Versailles; League of Nations; reparations; Great Depression; trade; protectionism
• Subtype: Chapter