The Round Table Movement in Paris and the Rise of a New World Order after WWI

Special issue on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the treaty of versailles

Abstract

The Paris Peace Conference represented a turning point for the British Empire. Great Britain and its Dominions placed on the side of the Entente all their military might together with the most powerful navy. However, at the end of the war, Britain, in spite of being a victorious country, saw its world hegemony reduced and its control over the widest Empire in the history of the world irremediably affected. On the other side of the Atlantic, the United States turned out to be the real winner of the war and this gave them great leverage in Paris in shaping the new international order. However, the passage from the period of the Pax Britannica, which for almost a century granted stability in Europe, to the Pax Americana, was not so unexpected and painful for the British political establishment as we usually think. Among the British establishment, there was a movement that was able to shape the country’s foreign policy for more than twenty years and prepared the ground for the creation of the Anglo-American alliance. This article tries to focus on the circumstances that made possible this transatio imperii and the role played by the Round Table movement in Paris in this respect.