Nehru and the New Commonwealth

Nehru's contribution to the emergence of the new, multiracial, multinational Commonwealth is now beyond dispute. But for India's decision to remain in the Commonwealth in 1949, for which he had been primarily responsible, the Commonwealth must of course have continued, but with a limited membership confined largely to the Anglo-Saxon group of nations. It was India's example which paved the way for all parts of the British Empire emerging into freedom automatically taking their place in the Commonwealth, thereby continuously enlarging its membership and adding to its significance. Professor Nicholas Mansergh, the leading authority on Commonwealth history, succinctly sums up Nehru's contribution on the emergence of the new Commonwealth. But for him, India almost certainly would not have become the first republic member-state of the Commonwealth and, but for Indian membership almost certainly nationalists elsewhere in Asia and, still more in Africa, would not in their turn have opted also for membership. In the consequent addition of anti-imperialist Asian and African states to a Commonwealth which had grown out of an Empire, by procedures that became so conventional as to cease to cause remark, an idea achieved its most spectacular triumph. Not Smuts, not Mackenzie King, but Nehru was the architect of that achievement.1 The impact of Nehru's decision was not confined to merely augmenting the size and nature of the membership of the Commonwealth but, even more significantly, on its character and outlook. Though still recognising the British monarch as the symbol of its free association and as such its head, it was no longer bound together by common loyalty to the British Crown, but by that to certain common ideals. Thus from being, a club of white, Anglo-Saxon nations and a bulwark of British imperialism in various parts of the world the Commonwealth was transformed into a multiracial and multinational grouping of nations working for the promotion of peace freedom and racial equality in the world.2

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The Atlantic

Policing the Seas ◽

10.5949/liverpool/9780973893465.003.0002 ◽

2008 ◽

pp. 19-48

Author(s):

Mark C. Hunter

Keyword(s):

British Empire ◽

Policy Making ◽

Economic Status ◽

Equatorial Atlantic ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Naval Policy ◽

Anglo American ◽

Liberal Trade ◽

Naval Structures ◽

The Impact

This chapter places the goals and the naval structures of Britain and America into the context of economic development and international relations in the equatorial Atlantic. It introduces the economic status of the Atlantic region in the early nineteenth century, before detailing how British and American naval activity developed power within it. It explores ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ and British imperialism in relation to naval policy-making; the free-trade mentality adopted by the British Empire in the middle of the century and the impact this had on trade with South America and West Africa. It discusses British naval strategy and deployment, American naval policy, and the economic basis of the Anglo-American relationship. It concludes that though America took a protectionist approach to commerce while the British objective sought liberal trade, they avoided diplomatic difficulty by utilising their respective sea powers in order to navigate maritime activity peacefully.

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Roundtable: Imperial History by the Book: A Roundtable on John Darwin's The Empire Project. Reply

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1017/jbr.2015.124 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 54 (4) ◽

pp. 993-997

Author(s):

John Darwin

Keyword(s):

British Empire ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Imperial History ◽

The World

AbstractIn an age when both the traditional book form and the world that the British Empire made are arguably in crisis, it is remarkable that big books on British imperialism abound. Contributors to this roundtable assess scale and genre as well as content in their discussion of the claims and impact of John Darwin's tome, The Empire Project. John Darwin's response is also included.

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RESPONSE

Philosophia Reformata ◽

10.1163/22116117-90000216 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 66 (1) ◽

pp. 84-88

Author(s):

Chang Huai-Chen

Keyword(s):

Far East ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

Slow Process ◽

The West ◽

The Far East ◽

The World ◽

Cultural Self ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

The Impact ◽

New Situation

As an Oriental, born and raised in Taiwan in strict conformity to the precepts of Buddhist and Confucian ethical patterns for human behaviour and who has spent most of her life in active business throughout the Far East, I would like to say in the first place that China’s contact with the West since the first half of the 19th century is a story full of disturbances. The slow process of adaptation and adjustment of China to the new situation created by Western aggressions was quite haphazard since China’s solid cultural self-consciousness made it underestimate the significance of the impact from the West, and particularly the impact emanating from the Anglo-Saxon part of the world.

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The Growth of Nationality in Canada

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society ◽

10.2307/3677893 ◽

1878 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. 362-383

Author(s):

Sydney Robjohns

Keyword(s):

Great Britain ◽

British Empire ◽

Gulf Stream ◽

Common Interest ◽

Anglo Saxon ◽

Liberal Party ◽

The World ◽

English Speaking ◽

Break Up

In recent lectures delivered at Birmingham Mr. Froude referred to the strained relations existing between England and the colonies, and indicated the temporary nature of the present arrangement. The question, in his opinion, is one which if left to the course of events will settleitself by the colonies drifting further away; but that if this people deem the continued union of the empire worth struggling for, and prepare themselves to encounter and overcome difficulties, then might accrue advantage to Great Britain and benefit to all Englishspeaking people. To quote Doctor Parker Peps, the country ”must be called upon to make a vigorous effort in this instance; but if our interesting friend should not be able to make that effort successfully, then a crisis must arise.” But Mr. Froude apparently falls into a similar error to Sir Julius Vogel, who imports Will into a subject which is one of natural forces only and purely. An important section of the Liberal party cannot “design or favour ” the break-up of the empire, at their will; neither can Mr. Froude nor Mr. Forster, whatever their wishes may be, suggest a practical basis of permament legislative union. Lord Blachford, Mr. Goldwin Smith, and others may indicates the tendency of natural forces, may mark on a chart the course of the Gulf Stream; but who can resist those forces? If one dare to predict at all, the growth of nationality in our colonies and the capacity of the Anglo-Saxon race point to another and a more beneficent result than even the federation of the British Empire, namely, the union consequent upon a common interest, opinion, language, and sympathy, of the English-speaking people throughout the world.

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The Impact on the Commonwealth of the Emergence of Africa

International Organization ◽

10.1017/s0020818300011073 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 291-302 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

John Holmes

Keyword(s):

Public Opinion ◽

British Empire ◽

Time Lag ◽

Rapid Expansion ◽

Political Force ◽

The World ◽

Official View ◽

British Commonwealth ◽

The Impact ◽

New Phase

When Africa emerged with unexpected haste as an independent political force in the world, the Commonwealth was still adjusting itself to revolutionary transformations in Asia. There was no doubt that it had entered on a new phase, but the phase was hard to define. Because the nature of the Commonwealth is implicit, there is always considerable diversity of view on its significance even among its own citizens. There is always a time lag as well. Many people, particularly in the “Old Commonwealth,” had just begun to grasp the significance of “The Commonwealth,” no longer “The British Commonwealth,” no longer a blood relationship; and now they had to cope with its rapid expansion and the imminent prospect that white members would be in a minority. Neither citizens nor foreigners had even made up their minds whether they were viewing the decline and fall of the British Empire or the finest hour of the Commonwealth. The doctrine that the new multiracial Commonwealth was the blessed culmination of the virtues of the Empire, the triumph of its good instincts over its errors, had certainly become the official view celebrated in speeches and communiqués, but public opinion lagged behind—not so much resistant to the new idea as captive of traditional attitudes. Not only the white people's view was anachronistic; Asians and Africans were themselves slow to recognize and accept their new position of equality and of responsibility.

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Roundtable: Imperial History by the Book: A Roundtable on John Darwin's The Empire Project. Introduction: Empire of the Book

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1017/jbr.2015.171 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 54 (4) ◽

pp. 971-976 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Antoinette Burton

Keyword(s):

British Empire ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Imperial History ◽

The World

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Roundtable: Imperial History by the Book: A Roundtable on John Darwin's The Empire Project. comment: Geostrategy (and Violence) in the Making of the Modern World

Journal of British Studies ◽

10.1017/jbr.2015.121 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 54 (4) ◽

pp. 977-983

Author(s):

Alan Lester

Keyword(s):

British Empire ◽

Modern World ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Imperial History ◽

The World

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Colonial Cities: Environment, Space, and Race

Environment and Empire ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199260317.003.0014 ◽

2007 ◽

Author(s):

William Beinart ◽

Lotte Hughes

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Environmental History ◽

British Empire ◽

British Imperialism ◽

Early Twenty ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

History Of Empire ◽

British Planning ◽

Changing Role

Colonial cities have dotted our narrative as points on the emerging map of imperial commodity extraction or as centres of transport and administration. In this chapter, the first to adopt a synthetic overview approach, our attention turns specifically to urban zones, their changing role in the emerging spatial and environmental history of empire, and the character of their built environments. Cities will also be a specific focus in discussing the environmentally linked disease of bubonic plague (Chapter 10). Cities transform, sometimes obliterate, nature in their immediate environments. Such urban concentrations have also acted as hinges for the broader process of environmental and social change across large swathes of land described in the first half of this book. Cities, as human creations, sometimes seem to have ‘broken from nature’. Yet the rise of many colonial cities was intimately connected with the changing relationships between people and nature in the regions they touched. We will argue that their environmental boot-prints were varied and hybrid in character, but in part moulded by specifically British planning and styles. British trade, shipping, and planning helped to plant the kernel of new cities across the globe. Of the fifty largest cities in the world by the early twenty-first century, fifteen had at least partial roots in the British Empire, and if US cities founded in the colonial period are included (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington), the total is nineteen. British imperialism may not, alone, have been ‘the greatest creator of towns’ but urbanism was surely one of ‘the most lasting of the British imperial legacies’. Nine of those fifteen are in areas of South Asia which fell under British control; three—Cairo, Lagos, and Johannesburg—are in Africa. Imperialism also contributed to the rise of British ports and manufacturing towns, and the growth of London. London was the largest city in the world at the height of the British Empire between the 1820s, when it overtook Beijing, and 1925, when it was overtaken by New York. Its population expanded from about 1.3 million in 1825 to a height of nearly 9 million around 1950.

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