Self-governing Dominions Research Articles

The Establishment of London House: Building a British World in the Late Imperial Heartland, c.1930–1945

In 1930, a trust was formed to provide a home for men of British descent from throughout the Empire who had come as students to London. The Dominion Students Hall Trust (DSHT) and its physical embodiment, London House, thereafter emerged as centres for imperial connectedness. Through the support and finance of elites in business, banking, and government, and partnership with imperial interest groups, London House established itself as a symbol of and locus for the pre-eminent imperial vision of the inter-war. This vision was founded on a belief in the value of cooperation between Great Britain and the self-governing Dominions, constituents of a ‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ or ‘British world’. In this article, British world cooperation is shown to have been fundamental to the foundation and success of the DSHT, making London House an instance of what Tamson Pietsch has termed ‘British world sites’. Drawing on this idea, the article demonstrates how preconceptions about imperial unity and British race patriotism affected the DSHT's foundation as well as London House's architecture. It concludes with an appraisal of how the deterioration of the British world's cachet as a source of imperial unity and supranational identity was received by both institutions.

Concept of British Commonwealth in Activities of Round Table Group at Beginning of ХХ Century

Some aspects of the complex intellectual discussion that accompanied the transformation of the British colonial system at the beginning of the 20th century are considered. Based on the analysis of published works, a generalized description of the conceptual views of the members of the “Round Table” group regarding the formation of the political and legal foundations of the British Commonwealth, as well as the development of close cooperation between Great Britain and self-governing dominions is given. At the same time, special attention is paid to the study of the practical significance of the ideas of A. Milner, L. Curtis and other intellectuals who were part of the group of intellectuals for transforming the forms and methods of managing the vast domains of the British crown. This transformation was due to a complex of factors of a socio-economic, political, moral and psychological nature, which Great Britain was forced to face in the first decades of the 20th century. It is noted that the changes that took place in the governing system of the largest colonial empire in history, among other things, contributed to the subsequent formation of mechanisms of international influence, which at the beginning of the 21st century were called “soft power”. It is shown that, on the other hand, in their theoretical constructions A. Milner and his followers strove to preserve the continuity of the ideology of imperialism, which gained popularity in the British establishment in the late Victorian period.

From barbarism to decadence without the intervening civilization: or, living in the aftermath of anticipated futures

ABSTRACT The styles, moods, performances, and practices of decadence have been simultaneous with modernization, not least in the process of nation-building. This article considers the dialectics of decadence and modernization with particular attention to the roles and responses of women in the twentieth to twenty-first centuries. World-historically, this was the emergence of self-governing dominions of Anglophone cultures, increasing US influence, and decolonization. Eighty-five states gained independence since 1922, with the African nation-states after 1956. While nationalist projects often deferred the Woman Question, liberal projects of New Womanism initiated debate between feminist individualism and more collectivist practices and ideologies. Movements like social Darwinism and eugenics impacted on women, and in terms of deformed relations of part to whole (a classic definition of decadence), modernization included the great unification movements of the “Pans” – Pan-Hellenism, -Islamism, -Asianism, -Africanism, and Zionism – but also the partitions of India/Pakistan, Palestine/Israel, the PRC/Taiwan, Ireland, Korea, Vietnam, and Cyprus, which often impacted women unequally. Under processes of globalization and nation-building, modernization and expressions of decadence have been in dialectical relations, though the meanings and targets shift as hegemons rise and fall.

John Stuart Mill and the liberal idea of Canada

The writer and politician John Stuart Mill played an important role in the two greatest constitutional moments of nineteenth-century Canada: he publicly supported Lord Durham’s 1838 report on Canada and he voted for the British North American Act (1867) that formed the Dominion of Canada. Mill had a part, in his own mind an important part, in Canada’s evolution from colony to self-governing dominion. I argue that his attitude to Canada was broadly consistent across these three decades and was consistent with his principled defence of liberal imperialism. But it was complicated by Mill’s relatively low opinion of the French Canadians who, he thought, lagged behind the rest of Canada in their development. That is why Mill supported Durham’s recommendation that they be assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream. I conclude that French Canada exposed the limits of Mill’s form of liberalism, which gave priority to the ‘civilising’ imperative over cultural diversity. And it remains questionable just how capacious Millian liberalism really is in accommodating cultural diversity.

Between Public and Private, Britain and Canada: Newfoundland Radio 1934-1949

This article examines Newfoundland radio during the period when Newfoundland was governed by a British-appointed Commission of Government (1934–1949), devoting particular attention to the political sensitivities and implications involved when one nation essentially assumed control of radio broadcasting in one of its dominions. The BBC had played the role of midwife in bringing the Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland into being during the 1930s, and provided regular advice to the Commission of Government, at a time when the countries of the empire were encouraged to follow the Corporation’s public service organisation as a model. The relationship between the BBC and the BCN did come to sour, however, due to a feeling in St. John’s that the larger Corporation was neglecting its tiny counterpart. As will be demonstrated using archival sources, there was some justification for this. Due to the particular constitutional status of Newfoundland, as in effect a Dependency of the United Kingdom, the BBC did not treat it on a par with the self-governing Dominions, which meant that possibilities for exchange were limited or non-existent. As well as examining these political issues, the article will develop a portrait of the unique aspects of Newfoundland’s early radio culture. Newfoundland is a particularly appropriate case study for radio beyond boundaries as, due to its geographical location, listeners have traditionally been exposed to US and Canadian radio stations as well as domestic broadcasters and short-wave frequencies. Furthermore, conventional boundaries between public and private models of broadcasting do not apply in Newfoundland, where commercial radio programming has often performed a valuable public service function.

‘More Hateful because of its Hypocrisy’: Indians, Britain and Canadian Law in the Komagata Maru Incident of 1914

ABSTRACTRecent remembrance and memorialisation of the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 has neglected the global and imperial implications of the incident, as well as the role that direct actions by the Indian passengers and Indians in Vancouver took against Canada’s discriminatory law. While the legal loss the passengers suffered could be regarded as simply tragic, the implications for the British Empire behind the Komagata Maru incident are more complex. More than just a legal battle between would-be Indian migrants and the Vancouver immigration authorities, the incident is a highly visible clash of two different understandings of the British imperial legal system. In contrast to any view that imperial harmony and the rights of all its subjects should supersede local concerns within the empire, Canadian immigration and legal officials instead viewed their rights as a self-governing dominion to make and pass their own laws (particularly around areas of racial desirability) as more important than issues of imperial membership, loyalty or harmony. The British government’s decision, in turn, not to contradict Canada’s eventual ruling against the Komagata Maru passengers and the decision to deport them, exposed the legal hierarchies of supposed imperial belonging, citizenship and ‘British liberty’ in the empire at a critical moment in the early twentieth century. What the incident highlighted, then, was an increasing legal distinction between settler colonies and colonies of exploitation within the empire.

Free Trade Empire to Commonwealth of Nations: India, Britain and Imperial Preference, 1903–1932

ABSTRACTThis article examines the dialogue between British tariff reformers and Indian nationalists over the application of imperial trade preference in India from Joseph Chamberlain's 1903 Birmingham address to the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference. For both groups, this issue was a focal point to assess India's constitutional status and national participation within an emerging British Commonwealth and international system after the First World War. Specifically, it marked a comprehensive challenge to the orthodoxy of free trade and liberal empire seen increasingly as a determent to reconciling national prosperity and imperial unity. It is argued that prominent tariff reformers’ well-studied criticism of an ‘unpatriotic’ cosmopolitan free trade made them also sympathetic to longstanding Indian grievances that this fiscal policy exacerbated economic exploitation and racial discrimination. After 1919, Indian nationalists, including ‘historical economists’, utilized metropolitan advocacy for imperial preference to demand fiscal and political autonomy from Britain and national, as well as racial, equality in collective imperial decision. At the 1932 conference in Ottawa, India's voluntary and negotiated acceptance of preferential trade with Britain, beside the white self-governing Dominions, helped transform the British Commonwealth into an egalitarian organization recognizable after 1947.

Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950) in Context: An Answer to Mazower and Morefield

This article engages with the recent scholarship of Mark Mazower and Jeanne Morefield regarding the South African and Commonwealth statesman Jan Christian Smuts (1870–1950), and in particular with their contention that Smuts was preoccupied with issues of racial superiority, and that this was his main motivator in matters of politics, both internationally and domestically. However, during his lifetime Smuts did not see the ‘Native question’ in the form in which it manifested from the 1950s onwards. It is therefore unfair and inaccurate to over-emphasise the racial question when writing about Smuts. Any historical account of Smuts must keep at least one eye on what Smuts could not have foreseen and must place Smuts in the context of his own time. Progression from smaller to greater wholes – one white nation instead of two language sections; a united South Africa instead of divided colonies and republics; membership of self-governing Dominions in a single British Commonwealth, and membership of international organisations, in particular the League of Nations, and later the United Nations – these were the ends to which Smuts’ energies were unreservedly devoted throughout his career. This is the correct lens through which to view Smuts’ liberal credentials.

Citizens of Empire: Education and Teacher Exchanges in Canada and the Commonwealth, 1910–40

ABSTRACTThis article examines how one group of actors actively infused education, citizenship and Canada’s international relationships with a sense of empire in the first third of the twentieth century. Making use of archival and published sources from collections in Canada and Britain, it focuses in particular on imperial citizenship teaching in Canadian schools, a number of education conferences held in the United Kingdom and the exchanges of elementary and high school teachers and school inspectors between commonwealth countries. In this period, politicians and bureaucrats in Canada and other dominions actively connected their education systems to an imperial network at the very moment that others were striving to attain more economic and political autonomy from the British government. Education came to occupy a significant cultural space alongside the trade agreements and constitutional changes that slowly recalibrated the nature of the British imperial system in the interwar period. Imperial education projects were an important feature of the cultural politics of a fading empire, but they were driven by actors in both the imperial centre and the self-governing dominions. This article argues that between 1910 and 1940 teachers and politicians in Canada drew on an international support network, actively fostered new ideas of citizenship, and strove to assert the country’s belonging in the British Empire.

The Privy Council Appeal and British Imperial Policy, 1833-1939

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was the final appellate court of almost all of the British Empire. The institution of the Privy Council appeal was perceived as an important instrument of British Imperial policy in a number of important areas. It was often perceived as a vital pillar of Imperial unity. This court was also promoted as the overseer of federal and devolved settlements within the component parts of the Empire. The appeal was also seen as providing a necessary form of economic oversight that guaranteed British investment in the colonies and self-governing Dominions. Finally, by the early 20th century the appeal was promoted as a means of protecting the rights of vulnerable minorities within the component parts of the Empire. This article examines the role of this court in these key areas of Imperial policy and their impact on popular perceptions of the Privy Council appeal.

The Irish Question and the Evolution of British Imperial Law, 1916-1922

By the early twentieth century Dominion status seemed ideally suited as the answer to the perennial ‘Irish question’. It offered Ireland a generous measure of autonomy while maintaining the territorial integrity of the British Empire. Nevertheless, the prospect of granting Dominion status to Ireland remained little more than a fantasy on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. This reality was altered by two parallel historical developments. The first of these was the 1916 Easter rising that killed any possibility of an effective home rule settlement for the entire island of Ireland. The second was a rapid acceleration in the evolution of the self-governing Dominions of the Empire towards greater autonomy in the constitutional sphere. In the aftermath of the First World War these two developments came together in the signing of the 1921 Treaty that permitted the Irish Free State to emerge with the status of a self-governing Dominion, the same constitutional status held by Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. This article will examine the legal and constitutional developments that took place between 1914 and 1922 that removed the possibility of an ‘Irish Dominion’ from the realms of fantasy and allowed it to play a vital role in the emergence of the self-governing Irish state. It also examines the important role of Hessel Duncan Hall’s book The British Commonwealth of Nations (1920) in influencing this process.

States rights and Australia’s adoption of the statute of Westminster, 1931–1942

Some historians have speculated on whether party political disagreements between Labor and non-Labor parties were behind the more than 10 years it took the Commonwealth of Australia to adopt the main provisions of the Statute of Westminster, the 1931 imperial act which declared the independence of the parliaments of the self-governing British dominions. This article examines the efforts to adopt the Statute between 1931 and 1942 and the connection of the Statute with Western Australia’s campaign for secession. It is argued that there was a bipartisan consensus at the federal level between Labor and the United Australia and Country parties in Australia on a pragmatic approach to defining dominion status. This was one that sought uniformity throughout the Empire, and that therefore supported adoption of the Statute of Westminster by all the self-governing British dominions after it had been passed by the British Parliament in 1931. Party politics was a secondary issue in the delay and the Statute of Westminster did not function as a marker of any particular political party’s broader attitude to imperial loyalty. The Commonwealth’s relations with the States and the secessionist aspirations of one of them – Western Australia – were the major cause of the delay in the Commonwealth Parliament’s adopting the law.This article has been peer reviewed.

'The trial the world is watching': the 1972 prosecution of Derk Crichton and James Watts, abortion, and the regulation of the medical profession in apartheid South Africa.

After its formation in 1910 as a self-governing dominion within the British empire, the Union of South Africa followed a combination of English and Roman-Dutch common laws on abortion that decreed the procedure permissible only when necessary to save a woman’s life. The government continued doing so after South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth and became a republic in 1961. In 1972 a sensational trial took place in the South African Supreme Court that for weeks placed clandestine abortion on the front pages of the country’s newspapers. Two men, one an eminent doctor and the other a self-taught abortionist, were charged with conspiring to perform illegal abortions on twenty-six white teenagers and young unmarried women. The prosecution of Dr Derk Crichton and James Watts occurred while the National Party government was in the process of drafting abortion legislation and was perceived by legal experts as another test of the judiciary’s stance on the common law on abortion. The trial was mainly intended to regulate the medical profession and ensure doctors ceased helping young white women evade their ‘duty’ to procreate within marriage. Ultimately, the event encapsulated a great deal about elites’ attempt to buttress apartheid culture and is significant for, among other reasons, contributing to the production of South Africa’s extremely restrictive Abortion and Sterilisation Act (1975).

“The Statute of Westminster, 1931: An Irish Perspective”

The enactment of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 represents one of the most significant events in the history of the British Empire. The very name of this historic piece of legislation, with its medieval antecedents, epitomizes a sense of enduring grandeur and dignity. The Statute of Westminster recognized significant advances in the evolution of the self-governing Dominions into fully sovereign states. The term “Dominion” was initially adopted in relation to Canada, but was extended in 1907 to refer to all self-governing colonies of white settlement that had been evolving in the direction of greater autonomy since the middle of the nineteenth century. By the early 1930s, the Dominions included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, and the Irish Free State.

Family Matters? The Dominion High Commissioners in Wartime Britain, 1938–42

The demands of the Second World War had long-term consequences for Britain's future relations with its four self-governing dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Forged by war, a key component in this evolving diplomatic relationship was the office of the high commissioner, which by 1950, became the main conduit of communications between the British and dominion governments. This essay introduces some of the main actors and tensions within the ‘family circle’, especially during the first three years of the conflict, when, after the fall of France in June 1940, the British Empire stood almost alone until the United States entered hostilities in December 1941. Christened the ‘junior war cabinet’, the influence of the dominion high commissioners reached its height in 1940, only to decline rapidly with the coming of Winston Churchill to power in May 1940. Indeed, their influence within Whitehall was directly linked with who was dominions secretary and the influence, or not, they had with the prime minister. This article pursues several lines of inquiry. First, there is a brief outline of the growing historiography on this subject which is followed by how the modern-day high commissioner was created during the inter-war period. Second, there is an examination of the dominion high commissioners themselves, their activities as a group, their varying approaches to their office and their relations with the Dominions Office. Finally, interwoven within the analysis, is an exploration of how these men were viewed by their counterparts in Whitehall, especially Churchill, who was determined to control the strategic direction of the war without any interference from the dominions or their representatives in London.

Accountancy and Empire: The British Legacy of Professional Organization

1. Accountancy and Empire: Setting the Stage Suki Sian and Chris Poullaos 2. The Self-Governing Dominions of South Africa, Australia and Canada and the Evolution of the Imperial Accountancy Arena during the 1920s Chris Poullaos 3. Canada between Empires Alan J. Richardson 4. Colonial Heritage and the Accounting Profession in Nigeria Chibuike U. Uche 5. The Malaysian Accountancy Profession and its Imperial Legacy (1957-1995) Devi S. Susela 6. The Imperial Roots of Accounting Closure: The Case of Sri Lanka P.W. Senerath Yapa 7. Imperialism and Professionalization: The Case of Accountancy in Jamaica Owalabi M. Bakre 8. Maintaining Empire: The Practice Link in Trinidad and Tobago Marcia Annisette 9. The Influence of Empire on the Establishment of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) After Independence Shraddha Verma 10. Between the Lines: The Professionalization of Accountancy in Kenya Suki Sian 11. Accountancy and Empire: Connections, Patterns and Suggestions Chris Poullaos and Suki Sian

The "Extraordinary Multiplicity" of Intellectual Property Laws in the British Colonies in the Nineteenth Century

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the history of intellectual property in Great Britain, very little has been said about the history of intellectual property law in the British colonies. This Article attempts an overview, focusing on the nineteenth century. The author argues that there was no apparent imperial strategy as to the development of colonial intellectual property laws, and that, as a consequence wide variations existed between the laws operative in Britain and the colonies. One exception to this picture existed in relation to literary copyright, where, for reasons that were never clearly articulated, British law had been extended to its colonies from 1814. The overall picture was otherwise one of legal fecundity, with capacity for variation and experiment by the colonial legislatures constrained more by internalized notions of what was appropriate than by formal, external, limitations imposed from Britain. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared a growing desire both in Great Britain, and amongst many of the colonies and self-governing dominions, for a greater level of uniformity.

The Global and Local: Explaining Migrant Remittance Flows in the English-Speaking World, 1880–1914

This article uses money order data to examine the determinants of British migrant remittances prior to 1914. Using panel data and cointegration analysis, it provides evidence of four distinct types of remittance behavior, lending support to Lucas and Stark's theory that remittances are driven by an implicit contract between remitter and remittee. The relative strengths of these different forms of remittance varied across the English-speaking world, with the largest differences occurring between migrants residing in America and those in the self-governing dominions. The explanation for these differences is seen to lie in the distinctive nature of British emigration to America.

Civic Virtue, Young Men, and the Family: Conscription in Rhodesia, 1974-1980

In John Lonsdale's concept of civic virtue it hard work of young men (and women), performed either for themselves or for others, that earns them rights of membership in, and responsibilities toward, a broader political collectivity in which public debate always somewhat disturbed by differences among older men young men have grown up to be.1 This may be an extremely useful way to think about African politics after World War II, because it brings families into political processes so forcefully: it a way to interrogate how families see state. The idea of civic virtue may have an application well beyond Kikuyu politics in 1950s. In this essay, I want to use Lonsdale's idea of civic virtue and apply it to Rhodesian struggles over national service, as illegal and embattled state fought a guerrilla war against two African armies in 1970s. Southern Rhodesia was founded by British South Africa Company for mineral exploitation and white settlement in 1890; it was granted self-governing dominion status by British in 1923 after its electorate of 20,000 whites rejected closer union with South Africa. The white population increased dramatically after World War II, from 82,000 in 1946 to about 250,000 in 1965. Almost all this immigration was of English-speaking whites, dwarfing Afrikaner and Greek populations and making country more British than ever before. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia had become part of Central African Federation. Some form of amalgamation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland had been bandied about by Southern Rhodesian politicians for years, but by 1953 a federation was seen as a hedge against majority rule. Such a hedge was temporary, of course, and when Federation ended and other member states became independent black-ruled countries, Rhodesia (no longer distinguishing itself from country that was now Zambia) sought a return to its dominion status. This was not possible in mid-1960s, and in November 1965 Rhodesia rebelled from England and made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) under Rhodesian Front (RF) government, led by Ian Smith. As an independent entity, Rhodesia was as much a fantasy as it was a state. Officials and supporters described it as a peculiar Utopia located outside time and space, and certainly outside Africa. For many authors, UDI was, after Thermapolaye and Lepanto, third time forces of civilization stood firm against eastern hordes.2 Rhodesia was like Britain at its best, like Britain in 1940s, or even a recreation of Rhodesia in 1920s.3 For many, Rhodesia was a right-wing social imaginary, last stop on imperial highway that most observers believed had reached a dead end well before 1965. To be a Rhodesian was to be out of place, fixed in action if not in borders. A Rhodesian, foreign minister intoned, is a breed of men like of which has not been seen for many a long age and which may yet perhaps by virtue of example that it sets, go some way towards redeeming squalid and shameful times in which we live.4 Indeed, to be a Rhodesian was to be not a Rhodesian. They only true Britons left,5 freed, according to a new immigrant, from the sorrow of editorials, UNO, trade unions, pundits, culture and rest.6 Such imaginings were accompanied by a guerrilla war fought from exile by two African nationalist armies; war began timidly in mid-1960s and escalated in early 1970s. This war took its inevitable toll on Rhodesia's economy and manpower-not only war casualties, but emigration-and after several failed settlement proposals, Rhodesian Front proposed an internal settlement that involved sharing power with some of African political parties that had been unable to gain a foothold among nationalist parties in exile. As war intensified and Rhodesia lost ground in countryside, in 1979 it became short-lived and no less illegal Zimbabwe-Rhodesia that had an African president at its helm and a new sanction for military. …

WOMEN, GENDER, AND THE PROMOTION OF EMPIRE: THE VICTORIA LEAGUE, 1901–1914

The Victoria League, founded in 1901 as a result of the South African War, was the only predominantly female imperial propaganda society in Britain during the Edwardian period. To accommodate women's activism within the ‘man's world’ of empire politics the League restricted its work to areas within woman's ‘separate sphere’ while transforming them into innovative methods of imperial propaganda. Through philanthropy to war victims, hospitality to colonial visitors, empire education, and the promotion of social reform as an imperial issue, the League aimed to encourage imperial sentiment at home and promote colonial loyalty to the ‘mother country’. The League's relationship with its colonial ‘sister societies’, the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa and the Canadian Imperial Order, Daughters of the Empire, demonstrates both the primacy of the self-governing dominions in its vision of empire, and the importance of women's imperial networks. The Victoria League illustrates both significant involvement by elite women in imperial politics and the practical and ideological constraints placed on women's imperial activism.