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

Abstract

The Paris Peace Conference represented a turning point for the British Empire. Great\xa0Britain and its Dominions placed on the side of the Entente all their military might\xa0together with the most powerful navy. However, at the end of the war, Britain, in spite of\xa0being a victorious country, saw its world hegemony reduced and its control over the\xa0widest Empire in the history of the world irremediably affected. On the other side of the\xa0Atlantic, the United States turned out to be the real winner of the war and this gave them\xa0great leverage in Paris in shaping the new international order. However, the passage from\xa0the period of the Pax Britannica , which for almost a century granted stability in Europe,\xa0to the Pax Americana , was not so unexpected and painful for the British political\xa0establishment as we usually think. Among the British establishment, there was a\xa0movement that was able to shape the country’s foreign policy for more than twenty years\xa0and prepared the ground for the creation of the Anglo-American alliance. This article tries\xa0to focus on the circumstances that made possible this transatio imperii and the role played\xa0by the Round Table movement in Paris in this respect.