250 J.-A. PEMBERTON
was ‘Economic Policies and Peace—Reciprocity, Regionalism and Self-
Sufficiency in Trade Policies Today,’ although this was later shortened
to ‘Economic Policies and in Relation to World Peace.’^32 Plans for the
inquiry into economic policies in relation to world peace were made with
a view to ensuring that the work produced on the subject by conference
members was as focussed as possible: to ensuring that inquiry into eco-
nomic policies in relation to world peace was nothing like the sprawl-
ing and amorphous inquiry into of peaceful change. As Condliffe later
explained, his plan was for a ‘limited and more precise attempt to study
the problem of Peaceful Change in a particular sphere,’ namely, the
sphere of commercial policy.^33
However, it was not just the vastness of the study undertaken in the
period dating from the latter part of 1935 to mid-1937 that concerned
Condliffe: he also believed that the study of peaceful change in those
years had been a largely futile exercise given the political and economic
conditions in which that study was undertaken. In the memorandum he
submitted to the 1937 ISC, namely, Markets and the Problem of Peaceful
Change, Condliffe observed that the post-war political and economic
settlement had ‘conspicuously broken down’. Further, he advised that it
was exceedingly unlikely that there would be a ‘satisfactory settlement’ of
disputes in regard to territorial ‘boundaries, colonial possessions, markets
and any other aspect of international relations’ in the near future.^34
Condliffe was of the view that the settlement of disputes in regard
to such matters as territorial boundaries and access to markets ‘may be
undesirable at the present time’ and that any changes in this regard were
dependent on an improvement in international political conditions. In
any case, Condliffe was doubtful that ad hoc remedies could do anything
to reduce the current level of international tension. Further to this, he
suggested that the demands for territorial change issued by certain actors
were not based on any real need. In his view, such demands were not
economically motivated: they either sprang from a desire for ‘prestige,
national honour, racial or national unity’ or had their basis in strategic
calculations. For Condliffe, the only respectable form of peaceful change
(^32) League of Nations, International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1939 , 17.
(^33) International Studies Conference: Report by the General Rapporteur Professor
J. B. Condliffe on the Meetings on Economic Policies in Relation to World Peace, AG
1-IICI-K-XI-22.
(^34) Condliffe, Markets and the Problem of Peaceful Change, 5.