4 - ‘We Mustn’t Use the Word “Empire”’: The British Name

Summary

The most fundamental measure of the global eclipse of Britishness is to be found in the politics of language. The narrowing semantic range of imperial Britishness was epitomized by India’s request for admission into the post-war Commonwealth in 1947 as the first member to adopt a Republican constitution. Resolving this dilemma also raised the question of whether the Commonwealth should retains its customary ‘British’ adjectvie, pressing the ‘British Commonwealth’ to the limit of its capacity to bind an increasingly atomized membership. By the early 1960s, the UK Government itself was inclined to repatriate the meaning of Britishness in official usage to refer only to themselves - itself a major landmark in downsizing the idea of Britain. This chapter traces the protracted diplomatic wrangling over the British name itself in the post-war world, with profound consequences for its future viability.