The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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democracy;
the transferance of ideas and institutions was not a one-way
movement from the metropolitan power to the
colonies.”30

Life in
the Dominions was helped by the progress made in world
communication. The railway revolution which had begun
to open them up in the
mid-nineteenth century persisted in later decades so that both coasts of
Canada
and of Australia were linked while numerous lines zig-zagged across the
countryside. In Southern
Africa the rail-line pushed further north in the quest of
building a Cape to Cairo backbone. Wheras in 1850
only 8,500 miles of rail had
been laid, by 1895 50,000 miles covered India and the colonies. With
the
twentieth century motor car transportation became even more widespread.
Furthermore the inter-war
period saw the commercial development of aircraft.
Imperial Airways carried its first mail and intrepid
passengers to Cape Town via
Cairo. Earlier the cable system had been considerably expanded. The
Eastern
Telegraph Company brought Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa within easy
communication of
London. British worries at the turn of the century in relation
to the challenge of rival empires led to the
construction of a government-
controlled “all-red” cable link to Australia via Canada. The Marconi
Company
inaugurated a wireless maritime service to help shipping. Additionally, in 1927 a
single company
which later became known as Cable and Wireless Limited, took
over the cable and wireless interests of the
various empire countries. All these
technological developments boosted immensely the accessibility of even
the
furthest and most isolated. As a result of the prospect of a viable economic future,
an expanding
population and a rising standard of living, the white Dominions not
unnaturally were pressing for acceptance
as full members of the international
family of nations. In order to attain such recognition they had to prove
to foreign
nations that they had weaned themselves away from ‘mother’ Britain and now
could
stand fully independent. In colonial minds their valiant fighting efforts in
the 1914-18 war marked their
full political development. Britain was prepared to

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