What Would an 'Imperial Federation' be Called?

iori

iori

Alright, so as most of us know during the early 20th century (before WW1) as the British Empire was changing one of the ideas to keep
everyone happy and makes thing more fair and workable was to transform the 'British Empire' into an 'Imperial Federation' with the colonies,
Dominions, England, Scotland and Ireland becoming constituent members.


Now assuming that it does form (likely without India), what would it be called?

What would it's official long-name be?
What would it's short name/general name be?
 

MRig

It could be called the Commonwealth of Nations as OTL.

In Look to the West a related but rather different entity is dubbed the "Hanoverian Dominions."

And, perhaps most likely, the name "British Empire" is retained but its structure reformed.
 

Xenos

Why not continue to call it the United Kingdom? This would still be an accurate term if additional Acts of Union become law. We would have the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
After all, the United States didn't change its name during its expansion. It merely expanded its existing political structure.
 

Larrikin

Banned
United Kingdom

Xenos said:
Why not continue to call it the United Kingdom? This would still be an accurate term if additional Acts of Union become law. We would have the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
After all, the United States didn't change its name during its expansion. It merely expanded its existing political structure.
Click to expand...

The Liberal Imperialists were looking at the concept of making the UK the first among equals with all the Dominions and Colonies having seats in a House of Dominions or some such.

There wouldn't have been more Acts of Union, rather, all the colonies, not just the white ones, would have become self governing Dominions, who then elected representatives to an Imperial Parliament.
 

Russell

Larrikin said:
The Liberal Imperialists were looking at the concept of making the UK the first among equals with all the Dominions and Colonies having seats in a House of Dominions or some such.

There wouldn't have been more Acts of Union, rather, all the colonies, not just the white ones, would have become self governing Dominions, who then elected representatives to an Imperial Parliament.
Click to expand...

Ideally, yes. But would such a structure have been possible? It has been pointed out before for instance that the fair (likley the only one India would be willing to accept in the long term) inclusion of India in such a structure (i.e. none of the allocation of seats based upon some notion of national importance), the Empire would go from being a British one, to an Indian one - a situation obviously unaceptable to the people of Britain and the other white dominions. So with the non-white colonies not represented and unlikley that they ever will be, it is only a matter of time before independance will become the only option left. This would, however most likley still leave the white nations in some sort of political union. Why would they not just formalise it with an Act of Union in an effort to remove various layers of uncessary and bureaucratic goverment? A United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (Austalasia?) and perhaps South Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong and the West Indies?

Russell
 
lounge60

lounge60

Iori said:
Alright, so as most of us know during the early 20th century (before WW1) as the British Empire was changing one of the ideas to keep
everyone happy and makes thing more fair and workable was to transform the 'British Empire' into an 'Imperial Federation' with the colonies,
Dominions, England, Scotland and Ireland becoming constituent members.


Now assuming that it does form (likely without India), what would it be called?

What would it's official long-name be?
What would it's short name/general name be?
Click to expand...

"Imperial Commonwealth of nation"
or
"Royal Commonwealth of nation"
or maybe
"British Commonwealth of nation" , i think.
 

octaviuz

It has been pointed out before for instance that the fair (likley the only one India would be willing to accept in the long term) inclusion of India in such a structure (i.e. none of the allocation of seats based upon some notion of national importance), the Empire would go from being a British one, to an Indian one - a situation obviously unaceptable to the people of Britain and the other white dominions.
Click to expand...
It should be reiterated that there wasn't even full manhood suffrage in the UK prior to WWI and the international consensus on one-man-one-vote for non-white colonials did not coalesce until after the Second World War. Assuming an absence of butterflies, that's several decades to expand the franchise in a controlled fashion, both to educate the colonial populace on their rights and to assuage the fears of the British and dominions of being ruled by wogs.
 
TheMann

TheMann

Well, what about the idea like what was put forth by Anaxagoras in Rule Brittania? He had much this same idea, but people are correct in pointing out that India's population would drawf that of all the other territories of the Empire combined. So, what about not having it strictly on a population basis, but more of an "influence" basis or something of that nature?

Assume this House has 250 seats. Allocate half of them (125) to Britain, based on its large influence. India, due to its large population, would get, say, 50. The other colonies then share the other 75 spots by population, which puts Canada as the largest other territory (so they get, say, 12 or 14), and then the others get seats too. At first, you just have it be Great Britain, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. I'm assuming this is 1920 or so when this comes about. Australia would include Papua New Guinea and Fiji would be part of New Zealand.

Now, after WWII, the idea of the colonies becoming independent nations leads to expansions. Malaya (which includes Singapore and Hong Kong here), East Africa, Nigeria, Rhodesia and the West Indies are brought into the empire in the 1950s and 1960s, and each also receive seats. Smaller numbers of them, of course, though that would shift over time. Nobody loses seats (the Indians in particular would sure not want that), so you get a growing parliament, so to speak.

By 2000, this parliament of the British Empire has 325 seats, with the following composition:

Great Britain - 125
India - 65
Canada - 23
Australia - 20
South Africa - 20
Malaya - 17
Nigeria - 12
East Africa - 10
New Zealand - 10
Ireland - 10
Rhodesia - 8
West Indies - 5
 
iori

iori

I forgot I'd made this thread. :eek:

I'm going with 'United Commonwealth' in the project this question stemmed from.
 

Russell

TheMann said:
Well, what about the idea like what was put forth by Anaxagoras in Rule Brittania? He had much this same idea, but people are correct in pointing out that India's population would drawf that of all the other territories of the Empire combined. So, what about not having it strictly on a population basis, but more of an "influence" basis or something of that nature?

Assume this House has 250 seats. Allocate half of them (125) to Britain, based on its large influence. India, due to its large population, would get, say, 50. The other colonies then share the other 75 spots by population, which puts Canada as the largest other territory (so they get, say, 12 or 14), and then the others get seats too. At first, you just have it be Great Britain, Ireland, India, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. I'm assuming this is 1920 or so when this comes about. Australia would include Papua New Guinea and Fiji would be part of New Zealand.

Now, after WWII, the idea of the colonies becoming independent nations leads to expansions. Malaya (which includes Singapore and Hong Kong here), East Africa, Nigeria, Rhodesia and the West Indies are brought into the empire in the 1950s and 1960s, and each also receive seats. Smaller numbers of them, of course, though that would shift over time. Nobody loses seats (the Indians in particular would sure not want that), so you get a growing parliament, so to speak.

By 2000, this parliament of the British Empire has 325 seats, with the following composition:

Great Britain - 125
India - 65
Canada - 23
Australia - 20
South Africa - 20
Malaya - 17
Nigeria - 12
East Africa - 10
New Zealand - 10
Ireland - 10
Rhodesia - 8
West Indies - 5
Click to expand...

I agree that this is the only way for the British Empire to evolve into some kind of supernational nation while still keeping it "British". However, I find it hard to believe that such an unbalanced and biased system of governance would last for long before places like India continue to agitate for an increased share of the representation. In my view, such vague democratic half measure rarely have substantive lasting power. Just look at devolution in the UK today - it's constantly edging closer towards a more federal structure.

Russell
 

zoomar

Why couldn't this hypothetical Federated Commonwealth (or whatever) adopt a bicamerial parliamentary structure? A House of the People apportioned on a population basis, with a House of the Dominions, with all dominions represented by one vote. Like in the US, approval of both houses would be required for legislation, and other powers could be exclusively reserved for the senate (treaties, etc).
 
iori

iori

zoomar said:
Why couldn't this hypothetical Federated Commonwealth (or whatever) adopt a bicamerial parliamentary structure? A House of the People apportioned on a population basis, with a House of the Dominions, with all dominions represented by one vote. Like in the US, approval of both houses would be required for legislation, and other powers could be exclusively reserved for the senate (treaties, etc).
Click to expand...

Their's no reason it could'nt.

I think it's more alot of people don't sem to like that system for some reason.
 

Chris S

TheMann said:
By 2000, this parliament of the British Empire has 325 seats, with the following composition:

Great Britain - 125
India - 65
Canada - 23
Australia - 20
South Africa - 20
Malaya - 17
Nigeria - 12
East Africa - 10
New Zealand - 10
Ireland - 10
Rhodesia - 8
West Indies - 5
Click to expand...

Taking into account the populations other than Great Britain (and presumably Ireland with it? Why would Ireland have separate representation if the POD is before WWI?) and India on account of their "influence", the rest of your seats are skewed.

These are approximately the current population figures:

Nigeria - 154 m
East Africa - 115 m (combined Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania)
South Africa - 50m
Canada - 34m
Malaysia - 28m (Peninsular Malaysia or Malaya - 21m)
Australia - 22m (about 29m with PNG)
Zimbabwe - 12m
West Indies - 6-7m
New Zealand - 4m (even with Fiji it would just barely break the 5m mark)

Those kind of figures for the seats may work in say 1920-1940, but once suffrage began to be extended to more of the populations in the various colonies after WWI and especially after WWII (and you still have WWII occurring in your post) then such figures are never going to fly over the long term. Certainly not approximately 60 years after WWII. As octaviuz's post mentioned, eventually the parliament will evolve to expand the franchise along with the education of the colonial populace and the British and old dominions so that the former know their rights and the latter don't cower in fear at being ruled from Bombay.

By 2000 I would expect (if the imperial federation didn't split before then over the issue of representation) that the lower house would have the following seats (approximately):

India - a third to a half of all seats
Nigeria - 125 seats
East Africa - 125 seats
UK - 125 seats
South Africa - 95 seats
Canada - 70 seats
Australia (with PNG) - 65 seats
Malaysia - 60 seats
Zimbabwe - 25 seats
West Indies - 10 seats
New Zealand (with Fiji) - 7 seats
Ireland - 7 seats

Now with 589 seats (and excluding India's 295 or 589 seats) some folks will say this lower house of parliament would be far too large, but then a lower house of parliament of between 884 to 1,178 seats isn't all that large considering that population of the areas represented would amount to over 2 billion people. Consider the following countries/international organizations and the size of their legislatures:

China - 1 billion people and a lower house of 2,987 (of course China being a one party dictatorship means parliament size doesn't have quite the same relevance)

India - 1 billion people; lower house of 552 and upper house of 250 (combined 802)

European Union - 500 million people; lower house of 736 and "upper house" of 27 (combined 763)

UK - 61 million; lower house of 646 and upper house of 707 (combined 1,353)

France - 65 million people; lower house of 577 and upper house of 321 (combined 898)

With between 23-30% of the seats in the legislature anyway, it's unlikely that Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are going to be (frequently) overwhelmed on certain key issues which would be designed to require a certain majority in order to be passed. Nor would India completely dominate since with only half the seats any measure that is favoured by all of the hundreds of Indian representatives (unlikely to start with, especially once party politics comes into the picture) would also need some representatives from elsewhere to be passed.
 

JedidiahStott

Where does this leave the Indian Princely States ?

The King-Emperor possessed suzerainty over them, but not sovereignty

Bear in mind that India _was_ an Empire, but there was never officially a British Empire, or British Emperor.
 

MarkA

No chance of an Imperial Federation being accepted in Australia. We were interested in nation building. A small majority of people liked the idea of being part of the Empire, so long as it did not interfere with our domestic plans. A significant percentage, mainly of Irish decent, would never accept such a concept regardless of class.

The labour movement was opposed to any sort of imperial federation and we had a universial franchise in 1901 with all adult male and female citizens having the vote unlike the UK and probably the others. It was supported by a very few individuals and the newspapers and Hansard of the day were full of opposition to the concept.

A British Commonwealth was fine as long as there was no direct interference in domestic politics.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top