58 J.-A. PEMBERTON
for mutual study,’ as evidenced by the generous support that it received
for its research activities from the Rockefeller Foundation.^181
As its reputation grew, so did its membership: as Kan’s status as a del-
egate of the IPR at the Madrid conference might indicate, what began
as a gathering of nations bordering the Pacific later expanded to include
representatives of European powers with imperial interests in the region.
Against a background of rising anti-imperial sentiment in China, a sen-
timent which the Chinese delegation at its first conference in 1925 did
not hesitate to air, the British were quick to see the utility in joining the
IPR. Thus, in 1927, the RIIA was admitted to the IPR as the British
unit of the IPR, a development which saw fourteen Britons participate
as full members in the IPR’s 1927 conference, which, like the IPR’s first
conference in 1925, took place in Honolulu. It was in part due to the
British presence that the 1927 conference focussed on China’s interna-
tional relations more than anything else. Webster was among the mem-
bers of the British delegation in Honolulu in 1927. He was also among
the members of the British delegation on the occasion of the IPR’s 1929
conference when it met in Nara and Kyoto. Toynbee was also a member
of the British delegation to the IPR’s 1929 conference, serving in that
context as a member of its programme committee.^182
By contrast and despite its interests in China and elsewhere in the
region, France’s presence at the IPR in its first four years of existence was
an advantage over former meetings separated by an interval of only two years and thus
having much less time available for thorough preparation. The advantage was implicitly rec-
ognized in the decision of the Pacific Council to continue the three-year period and hold
the next (seventh) conference in 1939.’ Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific,
1936 , vii. See also Bruno Lasker and William L. Holland, Problems of the Pacific, 1933:
Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Banff, Canada, 14–26
August 1933 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), ix, xiii. Note that according to
the preface to the proceedings of the IPR’s fifth conference in 1933, the IPR’s next confer-
ence was expected to take place in 1935.
(^181) J. B. Condliffe, ‘An Experiment in Diagnosis,’ Pacific Affairs 3, no. 3 (1929): 103–
15, 103.
(^182) ‘Appendix1: Members of the Conference,’ in Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific:
Proceedings of the Second Conference, 590; ‘Appendix 1: List of Conference Members,
Observers and Staff,’ in Condliffe, ed., Problems of the Pacific, 1929, 624; and ‘Appendix 7:
Officers of the Institute of Pacific Relations,’ in Lasker and Holland, Problems of the Pacific,
1933 , 480.