The Commonwealth The Problem of Independence

Abstract

Assessment of Britain’s relationship with the Commonwealth and colonial territories is peculiarly difficult. Present issues are apt to be clouded over with a haze of emotion. There are some who feel a sense of guilt over the way in which the Empire was acquired. They dislike the acquisitive instinct so evident in its formation, the jingoism of painting the world map red, the commercial exploitation of the colonies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the bitter fighting in India, North America, South Africa, and the Gold Coast, and the overriding of native interests experienced by the Maoris, for instance, in New Zealand; above all they dislike the bland assumption of a divine right to rule by small groups of white settlers over vastly greater numbers of native inhabitants; nor are they reconciled to the situation by the attempts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to create governments on the Westminster model in the dependent territories. Conditioning dependent communities to accept a form of government alien to their own traditions is regarded by these critics as simply another example of British arrogance

Attitudes to the Commonwealth and Empire. Factors in granting independence : political maturity, social development, industrial organisation, multi-racial problems, economic stability, the problem of the small dependencies. Federation—its limitations and value. Can the Commonwealth survive?

THEME: The methods of training dependencies for self-government were soundly conceived, but have not been fully applied.