![]() These were all countries of white settlement, territories to which Britain had exported population since the end of the Napoleonic wars. The rot (if that is the right word) started at the 1911 Imperial Conference, the first of several meetings of the British Prime Minister and his counterparts in the four “dominions” (Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand). Ironically, it was South Africa which provided the constitutional precedent for the decolonisation process which was to take place so rapidly during the reign of Elizabeth II. In fact, the decolonisation process had started half-a-century before. However, by the early 1970s a bulk of the Empire had gone.īritain effectively scuttled in the face of early nationalist stirrings (Ghana) the expense in blood, money and prestige of confronting armed struggle and violence (Malaya and Kenya) the increasing cost of demands for “development” in the colonies the foreign policy disaster of Suez and London’s developing sense that it should reorient its trade to a uniting Europe. It was not realised at the time, nor intended, that the Empire would begin to dissolve as fast as it did after the Queen had come to the throne. ![]() The three High Commission Territories in southern Africa (Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland),Īll are now independent, and have become republics, although all (Zimbabwe being the exception) belong to what used to be known as – but is no longer known as – the “British” Commonwealth. ![]() The two Rhodesias (Zambia and Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi) And there was still Africa.įour in east Africa (inclusive of Zanzibar, then still separate from Tanganyika), There were still other territories in Asia, notably Malaya, odd outposts in Latin America and various islands in Oceania. India had been the “Jewel in the Crown”, but had proceeded to a violently partitioned independence involving the creation of predominantly Muslim Pakistan in 1947. At its height, the British Empire extended over something like a third of the world, but was already in recession when the Queen came to the throne.
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