ABSTRACT
The Round Table journal first appeared in November 1910, and, after a brief hiatus in 1982, is still published today. Initially sub-titled ‘A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Empire’, it reflected and indeed anticipated the evolution of the empire/Commonwealth, changing its sub-title to ‘A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Commonwealth’ in 1919, ‘A Quarterly Review of British Commonwealth Affairs’ in 1948, ‘The Commonwealth Quarterly’ in 1966, and finally ‘The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs’ in 1983. Published quarterly until 2000, it is now published six times a year, with two or three of those ‘special issues’ focusing on a particular topic or theme. Its publisher’s rubric states that it ‘provides analysis and commentary on all aspects of international affairs’, and ‘is the major source for coverage of the policy issues concerning the contemporary Commonwealth and its role in international affairs’. Published first at what may now be regarded as the high point of the
empire (in confidence if not extent) – yet also a time when uncertainty of purpose and threats both external and internal were more than clouds on the horizon – the Round Table caught the imagination of political elites in Britain and throughout the empire. It rapidly carved out for itself an important role in the dissemination of information about and between different parts of the empire, analysis of the problems the empire faced, and attempts to find and garner political support for possible solutions. It was regularly quoted in parliament, and the South African prime minister Jan Smuts described it as ‘the one thing of its kind which is read by nearly everyone who determines public policy or originates public opinion’.1 For the last fifty years the journal has steadily become more oriented to academic than policy debate, but it still straddles the worlds of academia and policy-making in a way that is highly unusual amongst scholarly journals, a fact reflected in both authorship and readership. In 2009, the doyen of Commonwealth scholars, David McIntyre, asserted that it ‘remained … the best means of keeping up with the Commonwealth into the 21st century’.2
