'This Community Which Nobody Can Define': Meanings of Commonwealth in the Late 1940s and 1950s. Issue 3 (4th May 2019)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- 'This Community Which Nobody Can Define': Meanings of Commonwealth in the Late 1940s and 1950s. Issue 3 (4th May 2019)
- Main Title:
- 'This Community Which Nobody Can Define': Meanings of Commonwealth in the Late 1940s and 1950s
- Authors:
- Prior, Christopher
- Abstract:
- ABSTRACT: Assessments of early postwar understandings of the power and potential of the Commonwealth have suggested the body either failed to shield the British public from a sense of national decline or that it comforted them that there was no need to worry about decolonisation because the organisation enabled the maintenance of British authority by other means. However, historians and political scientists who provided public comment on the present and future of the body in the late 1940s and 1950s complicate such assessments, wracked as they were by a profound uncertainty over what the Commonwealth could achieve. Their sense of uncertainty was not derived from a pessimistic reading of the tangible events and processes of the period that we might today assume blunted commentators' faith in Commonwealth cohesion, such as Britain's relationship with Europe, neutralism, apartheid, or even Suez. Instead, uncertainty over the Commonwealth's capacity to realise a latent potential supposedly rooted in its members' willingness to work together was rooted in something more elemental, namely sustained uncertainty regarding the nature of the body's connections and functions. The body was judged an abstraction, a nascent and unparalleled experiment whose bonds were extensive yet impossible to measure. Its perceived opacity rendered it neither a cause for concern nor a salve to a wounded British morale.
- Is Part Of:
- Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth history. Volume 47:Issue 3(2019)
- Journal:
- Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth history
- Issue:
- Volume 47:Issue 3(2019)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 47, Issue 3 (2019)
- Year:
- 2019
- Volume:
- 47
- Issue:
- 3
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2019-0047-0003-0000
- Page Start:
- 568
- Page End:
- 590
- Publication Date:
- 2019-05-04
- Subjects:
- Commonwealth -- decolonisation -- historians -- political scientists
Commonwealth countries -- History -- Periodicals
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- Periodicals
Electronic journals
909.0971241 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fich20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗
http://www.ingenta.com/isis/browsing/AllIssues/ingenta;jsessionid=2bho7cvlcvo3t.circus?journal=pubinfobike://fcp/ich ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/03086534.2019.1596205 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 0308-6534
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 5005.050000
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 10688.xml