It fundamentally mischaracterises what the Commonwealth is,and who it should benefit. It simply assumes that because its membership is built on a shared history within the British Empire,it must be a mere extension of imperial domination. The more plausible interpretation is that the Commonwealth was always about the very opposite of this:moving on from imperial control. The idea emerged in the 19th century as some British colonies – especially places like Canada and Australia – became increasingly independent. The “Commonwealth of Nations” concept was meant to capture Britain’s declining sovereignty over such places. Thus does the phrase appear in the treaty between Britain and Ireland in 1921,which ended the Irish War of Independence and established the self-governing Irish Free State. Specifically,it appears in the Irish Parliamentarians’ oath of office,where the reference to the “British Empire” was replaced with the “British Commonwealth of Nations”. Clearly being part of a Commonwealth was acceptable to the Irish in precisely the way being part of the Empire was not.
By the time the Balfour Declaration made the Commonwealth official in 1926,the organising principle was that these nations were “equal in status[and] in no way subordinate to one another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs”. Commonwealth nations would not be bound to Britain by force,but by “free association”. They could choose to leave if they wished,as the Irish eventually did.
Over time the Commonwealth only became less and less imperial. After World War II,it dropped “British” from its official title. Where once its nations shared a “common allegiance to the Crown”,that all changed when India became a republic in 1950. Now,most Commonwealth nations are republics,while others like Malaysia or Tonga replaced the British monarch with one of their own. It even has members that were never part of the British Empire in the first place,like Mozambique,Rwanda,Togo and Gabon.
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Who cares about this? Not Australians,Canadians or Brits. Indeed,a 2009 survey found UK citizens to be the least supportive of the Commonwealth. Support was twice as high in less wealthy countries like Malaysia,South Africa and India. And that’s significant when you consider that the Commonwealth is made up of mostly developing countries. Of its 56 members 21 are in Africa. A whopping 33 are “small states”,such as islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. That makes it the only major world forum in which small states are the majority.
These nations face unique disadvantages that come from being small,isolated,and often without valuable natural resources. They are particularly economically and environmentally vulnerable. Accordingly,the Commonwealth produces a relatively high amount of research specifically promoting their interests to the rest of the world. It also provides them a regular forum to lobby and build relations with a behemoth like India,which is probably of much greater interest to them now than Britain is. Viewed this way,the Commonwealth isn’t a means of continued colonial domination. It’s a forum for the world’s tiniest nations to sit at the same table as the world’s biggest. It turns out that calling the Commonwealth an imperial anachronism is easiest if you’re in a rich white nation that would ultimately have nothing much to lose if it vanished.