1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 59limited to one representative in the form of an observer in the case of
the 1929 conference.^183 Although no French representative attended the
IPR’s 1931 conference which took place from October 21 to November
2 in Shanghai and Hangkow (Hankou), against the background of the
‘grave events in the Far East,’ that is, against the background of the
Manchurian explosion of 18 September and its aftermath, a group in
Paris took the first step in the direction of French membership of the
IPR by constituting the Comité d’études des problèmes du Pacifique.
The chair of the Comité d’études des problèmes du Pacifique was Paul
Painlevé. A mathematician and former prime minister of France, Painlevé
was at this time a member of the ICIC and, on the basis of an infor-
mal agreement concerning the role of the French member of the ICIC,
chair of the IIIC’s governing body. Like Painlevé, the vice-chairman of
the Comité d’études, namely, Albert Sarraut, was an homme d’État: he
had twice served as governor-general of French Indochina; had been the
minister for the colonies from 1920 to 1924. He had also served on two
occasions as prime minister of France, most recently from January 24 to
June 4, 1936.^184
There was a connection between Bonnet as director of the IIIC and
the Comité d’études des problèmes du Pacifique that might be taken to
suggest that Bonnet’s presence at Yosemite in 1936 was not solely driven
by the professional interest he had in the topic of peaceful change as a
result of the IIIC’s institutional link to the ISC. The connection between
Bonnet and the Comité d’études des problèmes du Pacifique was
explained by Bonnet in a letter he sent to Shotwell in February 1932.
Bonnet was acquainted with Shotwell through the latter’s intellectual
and other activities in the international sphere, for example, his participa-
tion in the American Committee on Intellectual Cooperation and in the
ISC. In the aforementioned letter, Bonnet informed Shotwell, who was
destined to become the American member of the ICIC in the following
(^183) ‘Appendix 1: List of Conference Members, Observers and Staff,’ in J. B. Condliffe,
ed., Problems of the Pacific, 1929: Proceedings of the Third Conference of the Institute of
Pacific Relations, Nara and Kyoto, October 13 to November 9, 1929 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1930), 629, and ‘Appendix 1: List of Conference Members, Observers,
Staff, and Committees,’ in Lasker and Holland, Problems of the Pacific, 1933 , 454.
(^184) ‘Culture générale,’ Coopération Intellectuelle, no. 42 (1934): 322–23.