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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acknowledge this but overseas countries were not so sure. After all Britain had
made a general
declaration of war bringing in the whole Empire, although
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and
India claimed that Britain’s
declaration was also theirs. Although in the fighting the Dominions
maintained
control over their own forces at the front, a general overall command by the
British
operated. The purpose of the whole effort was one of co-operation, yet
under a British lead. Most
significantly, Britain had made it clear before the war
that she alone determined British and Empire foreign
policy.

“At
the 1919 peace conference the Dominions were accorded an
indeterminate status, short of full nationhood, and
in their admission to the
League of Nations, the Dominions took on a similar dual status, as
individual
members and as part of the Empire. Sometime during the 1920s, however, the
Dominions probably
acquired full nationhood although no precise date can be
given.”31
This development received the official seal known as the Statute of
Westminster in 1931, which categorized
the Dominions as members of the British
Commonwealth of Nations. But even after that event, not all the
nations were
exercising their full rights in foreign policy, such as diplomatic representation.

The
‘Commonwealth’ idea had been gestating very slowly as the political
answer for the grown-up Empire.
Colonies could be granted independence
without being separated completely from their imperial heritage.
Colonial
nationalism could be satisfied in a way that imperial unity could never manage.
Aspects of the
commonwealth idea had been in formulation since at least the
eighteenth century. In the next century the
‘little Englanders’ contemplated some
sort of a commonwealth structure in which the colonies might
freely co-operate
and associate with Britain. In the twentieth century the elaboration of
the
‘dominion’ concept for the self-governing colonies became one of the hallmarks
of the
commonwealth spirit; the creation in 1907 of the Dominions Division
within the Colonial Office was token of
this. The political maturity of the

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