The Britannic Vision: Historians and the Making of the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1907-48.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Book review

THE BRITANNIC VISION

Historians and the Making of the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1907-48

Author: W. David Mcintyre

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2009, 377pp, 65 [pounds sterling].

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As described in detail elsewhere in this issue, late last year leaders of 49 countries gathered in Trinidad and Tobago for the biennial Commonwealth get-together. They participated in a range of meetings and activities that demonstrated, above all, the continuing vibrancy of this inclusive grouping. So vibrant in fact that it is still growing, for Rwanda was accepted as a member during the Chogm.

The advent of Rwanda in Commonwealth forums is yet another illustration of the compromise and willingness to seek practical solutions to problems that has characterised the development of the Commonwealth over the last century. The still evolving modern Commonwealth emerged after the Second World War, its ranks steadily increased as the various dependencies of the British Empire moved to independence.

David McIntyre has been an indefatigable chronicler and analyst of the modern Commonwealth, not least in the reports of successive Chogms he has provided in this journal over twenty years. But in The Britannic Vision he shifts his focus to the antecedents of this Commonwealth--to the original British Commonwealth of Nations, centred on Britain and the self-governing settler colonies. It was a relatively short-lived phenomenon: as McIntyre notes, the term was first coined in 1914, and officially adopted seven years later, but it had disappeared by the late 1940s.

In essence the British Commonwealth of Nations was the framework within which the self-governing colonies--or Dominions, as they were styled after 1907--came to independence. Paradoxically it was a process in which a major focus was on preserving the unity of the whole entity even as the Dominions emerged as separate actors on the world stage. Many of those involved in the process were moved by a conception--a Britannic vision--in which the Dominions, while going their own ways, would remain tied to Britain and each other by their common allegiance to the Crown. The landmarks on this path were the Balfour Declaration on Dominion Status in 1926 and the Statute of Westminster five years later, which gave legal effect to it. Major catalysts were the two world wars, which demonstrated the existence of a fundamental unity and co-operative spirit.

With their varying...