The Impact on the Commonwealth of the Emergence of Africa

Extract

When Africa emerged with unexpected haste as an independent political force in the world, the Commonwealth was still adjusting itself to revolutionary transformations in Asia. There was no doubt that it had entered on a new phase, but the phase was hard to define. Because the nature of the Commonwealth is implicit, there is always considerable diversity of view on its significance even among its own citizens. There is always a time lag as well. Many people, particularly in the “Old Commonwealth,” had just begun to grasp the significance of “The Commonwealth,” no longer “The British Commonwealth,” no longer a blood relationship; and now they had to cope with its rapid expansion and the imminent prospect that white members would be in a minority. Neither citizens nor foreigners had even made up their minds whether they were viewing the decline and fall of the British Empire or the finest hour of the Commonwealth. The doctrine that the new multiracial Commonwealth was the blessed culmination of the virtues of the Empire, the triumph of its good instincts over its errors, had certainly become the official view celebrated in speeches and communiqués, but public opinion lagged behind—not so much resistant to the new idea as captive of traditional attitudes. Not only the white people's view was anachronistic; Asians and Africans were themselves slow to recognize and accept their new position of equality and of responsibility.