The Institute of Pacific Relations: pan-Pacific and pan-Asian visions of international order

Abstract

Between the world wars, the often under-rated Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) was perhaps the most visible and impressive international foreign policy think tank, an ambitious and idealistic effort to establish a transnational knowledge network. The IPR was among the rather few interwar international organizations that sought to accord Asians genuine input into its administration and activities. By World War II, the IPR had become a focus for nationalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial sentiment within its assorted Asian member states and also in North America. Such tendencies perhaps peaked at the pioneering 1947 Asian Relations Conference organized by one of its member organizations, the Indian Council on World Affairs. Despite its stated pan-Pacific outlook, the IPR may have thereby encouraged the pronounced pan-Asian outlook and consciousness that characterized the 1955 Bandung Conference. Ironically but presciently, the IPR’s checkered experiences also suggested that conflicting national interests dividing member states had great potential to undercut attempts to establish broader transnational groupings.