Elizabeth II

George VI, at his coronation in 1936, was styled "By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India".

Elizabeth II, at her coronation in 1953, was styled "By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith".

This already indicates major changes, all of which took place in the late 1940s: the independence of India and Pakistan; the establishment of the Republic of Ireland; and the replacement of imperial claims with headship of the Commonwealth. The two unchanging elements are being king or queen of Great Britain, and Defender of the Faith.

Nevertheless, the coronation was the occasion for much celebratory propaganda about a "second Elizabethan age", in which Britain would, by courage and ingenuity, (again) carve out a place for itself in a world dominated by much stronger global powers.





Pay close attention to the Queen's words in her first televised Christmas broadcast, the year after Suez.

The Fifties

Most of the notes for class 4 seem to have vanished into cyberspace, leaving only the powerpoint slides (on icampus). Fortunately, this is a period extremely well covered by Andrew Marr (as you will all be aware, but here it is again).

The main events outlined in class were:

• the coronation: a moment of jubilation, the first mass ceremony of the television age (Princess Diana's funeral, at the end of our period, makes a nice complement), and a time for new hopes of British "greatness" emerging from wartime deprivation and postwar austerity.
• British achievements in science and technology (the first jetliner, the first nuclear facility for non-military purposes, an independent atomic bomb, describing the structure of DNA, etc.), giving science-fiction writers the impression that Britain would stand at the forefront of the future
• the attempts to maintain some independent standing in world affairs, and to reassert British power in Malaya and Kenya
• the Suez Crisis, for which follow this link (it's important, so do click), revealing the illusory nature of any hopes for Britain being an independent world force; two of the films used in class are here
• a long period of economic growth and prosperity, despite on-going inefficiencies in British industry
• the "Profumo Affair" (covered in detail by Marr)
  

From Empire to Commonwealth

In the immediate postwar period Britain still thought of itself as an imperial nation. At its height the British Empire was the largest empire the world has ever known, comprising territories in North America, the Carribean, the South Atlantic, West Africa, Southern Africa, East Africa, South Asia, South-East Asia, parts of China, and most of Oceania. After 1919, parts of the Middle-East were also ruled by Britain under mandate from the League of Nations.

Each of these territories had its own status and method of government, varying according to how it had become part of the British Empire, pre-existing customs (as the British understood them), the strength and cohesion of native elites, and other local or regional conditions. The five most important parts of the Empire were Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa (sometimes called the "four pillars" of the Empire) and India. Queen Victoria’s two most important titles were Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India. Victoria’s successors also bore the title Emperor of India until renouncing it in 1948, the year after India became independent. The only 20th century British monarch never to have been emperor or empress of India was Elizabeth II.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were settler colonies: large numbers of British and Irish (and other European) settlers emigrated to these territories. These were the first colonies to attain significant measures of self-government: Canada from 1867, Australia from 1901, New Zealand from 1907, and the Union of South Africa from 1910. They remained tied to Britain in various ways, for instance supplying troops during the two world wars, recognising the British monarch as Head of State, and (until 1967) often holding their currency reserves in Sterling.

As more and more imperial territories became self-governing, the Empire was transformed into a free international association, the Commonwealth of Nations. This is an international organisation, currently of 53 states (listed here), all of which (with the exception of Mozambique) were once part of the British Empire.

Elizabeth II is not only the head of the Commonwealth, she is also head of state in 16 of the states that are members of the Commonwealth: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis (listed in order of independence). She is also Lord of Man, and titular Queen of Fiji.

Commonwealth countries are often proud to have legal systems, armies, educational institutions, and structures of government and administration modeled on British examples, although they are equally proud of the fact that the British are no longer running them.

The Commonwealth also provides sporting exchanges in the Commonwealth Games (a sort of mini-Olympics), and part of the legacy of Empire is the way that the games cricket and rugby are played across the globe, primarily in Commonwealth countries (unlike Association Football, which has been adopted by many countries that were never part of the British Empire).

One of the legacies of the Empire is the existence of a collection of nations around the world in which the English language is widely spoken in everyday life and is used as a literary language, not simply a lingua franca for negotiation and exchange. Even the U.S.A., the main English-speaking country outside the Commonwealth, was originally a collection of British colonies in North America. The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to the Nigerian novelist Wole Soyinka (1986), the West-Indian poet Derek Walcott (1992), the Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1995), the Indo-Trinidadian travel writer V.S. Naipaul (2001), and the Southern African novelists Nadine Gordimer (1991), J.M. Coetzee (2003), and Doris Lessing (2007). All these, and many others who have not received the same accolade, write in English for a world-wide readership, and contribute to an international literary culture that cannot be described by any model that simply puts Britain at its "centre".

Imperial and Commonwealth history is also important in determining post-war patterns of mass migration into the British Isles, creating a much more multiracial and multicultural society there, as well as earlier patterns of migration in other parts of the world (such as from India to the West Indies and to East Africa).