Names per chapter in The British Commonwealth of Nations

“Empire” “Common -wealth” “Group” Preface 7 10 2 1: ‘Introductory’ 15 20 6

2: ‘The old Colonial System and the Coming of Responsible Government’

8 0 2

3: ‘The Meaning of Responsible Government –Ideas as the to the Nature of the Colonial Relationship, 1840-1900’

23 0 1

4: ‘The Rise of Colonial Nationalism and of the Colonial Idea of Alliance’

10 0 0

5: ‘The Imperial Conference, 1887-1911, and the Development of Dominion Nationhood’

21 1 0

6: ‘The Working of the British Group Before the War’ 32 6 11 7: ‘The Development of Imperial Co-operation During and

After the War’

26 6 7

8: ‘The Principles of the Settlement: Freedom and Co- operation –the Rejection of Imperial Federation’

31 9 8

9: ‘The Problem of Dominion Status –the Reconciliation of Absolute Equality of Nationhood with the Formal Duty of

Empire’

63 13 25

10: ‘The Machinery of Co-operation’ 47 22 21 11: ‘The British Group and the League of Nations’ 55 30 28 Furthermore, a distinct pattern in usage can be determined. In the preface and introduction there is a distinct dominance of the names based on the words

although the term “Empire” is used freely. In chapters 6-9 “Empire” remains

dominant, but there is an increasing use of the names based on “Commonwealth” and “Group”, and in chapter 10 the division is half and half between the old names and the new ones. In the final chapter the new names again achieve a slight dominance over the term “Empire”.

An explanation for this distribution of the usage of the different names is found in the chapter titles. Chapters 2-5 are essentially historical chapters, covering the period from 1840-1911, a period when the British Empire clearly was an empire and

therefore referred to by that name. Hall is thus using the name “Empire” consistently both with its usage in the period he is covering and the dominant political

understanding of what that term implies. From chapters 6 onwards, however, Hall was discussing the processes that had taken place in the previous decade, along with those that were still needed to fully transform the Empire into its new state, which he referred to by the name of “the Commonwealth”. Similarly, the preface and

introduction explains his views on the new situation and what is demanded of it, and thus primarily rely on the new terms. In fact, the introduction specifically introduces the name of “the Commonwealth” as the new proper term for the transcended Empire:

This [Colonial 1887] Conference had been partially an expression of the colonial conception of the relation between the Dominions and the United Kingdom as that of an “alliance” between autonomous states; but as the Imperial Conference developed, it became apparent that the word "alliance" very imperfectly expressed the real nature of this relationship. Being a word which is normally used to describe a limited and temporary contractual

natural and organic relationship which exists between the group of kindred states now becoming known as the British Commonwealth.363

The distribution shown in table 1.2 thus reflects a perspective where the author

understands “Empire” as a historically correct and commonly understood name, while he is introducing the names “Commonwealth” and “Group” as modern replacements. The underlining highlights how Hall formulated and created his own reality, by stating that the Empire was “now becoming known as the British Commonwealth” as an established fact, in spite of the name having no official recognition in any statute yet, nor to any significant degree in political debate in either of the Houses of Parliament. It is also noticeable, that he used the distinctly Hegelian language of referring to the “natural and organic relationship” between the different parts.

--Hall: Sample Analysis—

Analysing a two page sample of Hall’s British Commonwealth of Nations –found in the appendix - from the beginning of chapter eight, ‘The Principles of the Settlement: Freedom and Co-operation –the Rejection of Imperial Federation’, helps give a better understanding of the different names he presented as he used a wide selection of his new terms for the Empire in it.364_{In the sample, he uses ‘the British Commonwealth}

of Nations’, ‘the Empire’ or “British Empire”, and ‘the Group’ or ‘the British Group’ in relation to the entity broadly known as the Empire. The Dominions are specifically mentioned as being part of “the Group”.

The sample uses the name ‘the British Commonwealth of Nations’ once, ‘the

Empire’ or ‘the British Empire’ on three occasions (on one of which British Empire is

363 _{Hall, The British Commonwealth of Nations, pp. 11-12. My underlining.}

given the predicate ‘a Group of States’), and ‘the Group’ or ‘the British Group’ three times. The joint occurrence of the names ‘the Empire’ and ‘the Group’, along with the fact that the Empire is described as ‘a Group of States’ in line 30, suggests that Hall

uses the two names to refer to the same entity, but with the specification that ‘Group’ implies that the Empire is as a ‘Group of States’ of which a basic principle is “the equal and autonomous nationhood of each self-governing State of the Group” (lines 13-14). Referring to the Empire as ‘the Group’ is thus intended to imply a specific political meaning, namely that of the free collaboration of autonomous group- members. This makes the sample ambiguous, because it both suggests that “the Group” and “the Empire” refer to the same thing, namely the complete Empire including the non-self-governing parts, and, in the very next words, predicate the member states of “the Group” as “absolutely free and equal” (line 30), which could – at that point in time – logically only refer to Britain and the Dominions.

While the sample only once uses the name ‘the British Commonwealth of Nations’, it is also the title of the entire book, which gives it more salience than the sample might suggest. In this particular case, the name is used in connection with “thenew ideas as to the nature and purpose of the British Commonwealth of Nations” (lines 4-5), which

semantically presupposes the existence of something named ‘the British

Commonwealth of Nations’ while suggesting that it is related to new ideas and the future. Thus it appears that ‘the British Commonwealth of Nations’ is given as the new name of the entity commonly known as ‘the British Empire’, which could correctly be referred to as ‘the British Group of Nations’ considered as a group of independent states. Thus all three (or five counting the short-forms) names refer to the same entity, but implies slightly different meanings with ‘Empire’ being the historical

name, ‘Group’ an explanatory name probably limited to Great Britain and the Dominions, and ‘Commonwealth’ the new name for the future.

-Zimmern-

Given that Zimmern’s Third British Empire was published in 1926, six years after Hall’s British Commonwealth, it is noticeable that he used the term “Empire” rather than “Commonwealth” in the title of the book. The same use is consistent in the titles of the five chapters that each correspond to a lecture given at Columbia University in 1925.

Table 2.1 presents a simple break-down of the main names for the Empire used:

2.1 Names in Zimmern, Third British Empire (1926) Times used in