48 J.-A. PEMBERTON
at a conference held in Madrid ‘a month and a half before the launch-
ing of a military rebellion which since then...[had covered]...Spain with
blood.’^150
In addition to an administrative meeting and a preliminary study
meeting on peaceful change, the agenda of the Madrid conference
encompassed a study meeting consecrated to the subject of university
teaching of international relations. According to the IIIC, ‘the impor-
tance’ of this subject would not ‘escape those who interested themselves
in the new forms of instruction in knowledge in a world in transfor-
mation.’^151 The study meeting on instruction in international relations
was held on the first day of the conference with Zimmern (who had
become in 1931 Montague Burton Professor of International Relations
at Oxford University and who remained director of the Geneva School
of International Studies, a school which he had founded in the same year
that he was appointed as chief of the IIIC’s Section of General Affairs,
that is, in 1925), serving as its general rapporteur. It was in that role that
Zimmern opened the in the context of which he made the point that
because international relations involved the study of society and not only
the study of the policies of governments, that it should be approached
from a sociological perspective. He then stated the following: ‘But the
society which makes the object of this study is the entire world, which
implies the extension of the domain of sociological research beyond con-
ventional limits.’^152
There was general agreement at the meeting that international rela-
tions encompassed an ensemble of evolving social relations and that
however much it was necessary to isolate different elements contained
within this ensemble, its synthetic character should always be kept in
view. There was also general agreement that international relations
belonged to the field of the social sciences. Where opinion diverged was
(^150) ‘Conférence permanente des hautes études internationales: Impressions de la dernière
session’ par G. Vladesco Rocoassa, AG 1-IICI-I-15.d, UA.
(^151) ‘Note,’ Intellectual Coopération, nos. 68–69 (1936): 1. See also the following: Liste
des delegues et participants, Neuvième conférence permanente des hautes études inter-
nationales, Madrid, 27–30 mai, 1936, AG 1-IICI-IX.1, UA. Approximately sixty schol-
ars attended the conference, including representatives from Western and Eastern Europe,
North America, Australia and Japan.
(^152) ‘Comptes rendu des débats: Première séance,’ Intellectual Coopération (b), nos.
68–69 (1936): 8–16, 9.