Spatial Continuities? The Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meetings, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Diplomacy of South Asian Decolonisation, 1944–1965

Abstract

The Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ (subsequently Heads of Government) Meetings or Conferences were the flagship events of the New Commonwealth in the two decades after the Second World War and the beginning of formal independence and decolonisation in South Asia. The post-war Commonwealth leadership sought to maintain unity on key international issues, which served British strategic interests, at least in the view of British leaders, officials, and influential commentators. The collision of interests between the expansion of Commonwealth membership to include South Asian and, later, African states and the managed decolonisation of the British Empire produced conflicts and compromises that often shaped the progress of the Prime Ministers’ Meetings. The New Commonwealth’s functioning as an international forum can be better understood by developing insights gained from interdisciplinary methodologies to explore the central role of Jawaharlal Nehru’s uses of space at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meetings to highlight continuities that, ironically, facilitated the profound changes of this era. Taking seriously the multivalent meanings and historical complexity of the Britain and the World analytical framework, we show how British space increasingly came to be used to advance South Asian political goals.