Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:32:53.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Nature and Structure of the Commonwealth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

K. C. Wheare
K. C. Wheare
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The structure of the British Commonwealth of Nations is peculiar. If it did not exist, you could not invent it. Its peculiarities reveal themselves at once if we try to find an answer to what looks like a fairly simple question, namely: How do we know whether a country is inside the Commonwealth or outside it? This question has never been very easy to answer. It is not enough to say that a country is within the Commonwealth if it is one of the Queen's dominions. That is quite true so far as it goes. It covers the cases of such important countries of the Commonwealth as the United Kingdom itself, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon, and the British West Indian Colonies. But it will not suffice to describe the position of such countries as Malaya, or Nigeria, or Uganda, or the Gold Coast, or Kenya, or Tanganyika. Large parts or all of the territories of these countries are not part of the Queen's dominions, strictly speaking. They are either protected states (as in Malaya) or protectorates (as in most of the African territories) or, as in the case of Tanganyika, Trust Territories under the United Nations. What we must say of these countries of the Commonwealth is not that they are part of the Queen's dominions but that they are under the Queen's protection or jurisdiction.

Type
The British Commonwealth: A Symposium
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 1953 , pp. 1016 - 1028
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Sir Ivor Jennings believes that the territories which were formerly part of British India still remain dominions of the Crown technically. See Jennings, W. I. and Young, C. M., Constitutional Laws of the Commonwealth (Oxford, 1952), p. 148Google Scholar.

2 See statement of Mr.Attlee, , the Prime Minister, in House of Commons Debates, Vol. 452Google Scholar, col. 2379.

3 Except India (see below).

4 Since these words were written Pakistan has tended to become a republic.

5 One footnote may be added, which may interest those who have followed the controversy in the United Kingdom as to whether the Queen should be described in Scotland as Elizabeth I or Elizabeth II. Apparently Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Ceylon, and Pakistan, for whom the Queen is certainly the first Elizabeth to reign over them as distinct Kingdoms, were content to describe her as the second Elizabeth! Yet the case for describing the Queen as Elizabeth I of South Africa is surely as strong as the case for calling her Elizabeth I of Scotland. The argument does not appear to have been invoked by the Scottish Nationalists.

I may add that I regard the Scottish argument as historically strong. It might equally well be applied to the overseas members of the Commonwealth.

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.