Before the summer of 1914, there were seemingly few indicators that British colonies would be represented on the international stage as nominally separate entities, as they would be five years later. Chapter One charts the changing patterns of British rule that constituted the ‘Third British Empire’, and how new patterns of imperial governance were beginning to emerge in the newly formed Dominion of South Africa, that would put the Empire on a trajectory towards separating its international personality. This chapter will also examine how India, a colony with comparatively fewer of the self-governing institutions of the Dominions, would also accede to the Imperial Conference alongside the Dominions, a significant step towards membership of the embryonic League. Finally, this chapter will assess to what extent the participation of colonies at international organisations and conferences was normalised, and what precedents were employed to justify the presence of colonies after the War ended.

This chapter explores how these efforts at resolving the empire’s crisis began to fail and produce unintended consequences. It traces the breakdown of cooperation on naval strategy and shipbuilding among colonial governments, especially that of Wilfrid Laurier’s and Robert Borden’s naval bills in Canada. It shows that the deep involvement of colonists in the forthcoming world war was not a certain proposition between 1910 and 1914, and that the empire’s security crisis threatened to derail colonial state-building projects in India and South Africa.