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By Root 872 0

Australia followed although not for over 30 years; 1 January 1901 marked the establishment of 'The Commonwealth of Australia', the end of a process begun in the 1850s when the parliaments of New South Wales and Victoria had been set up by Acts passed in London. New Zealand had formally become a British possession in 1840, as part of New South Wales, a separate colony the following year and then had gained self-government in 1856 with a constitution modelled on Westminster. In 1901 it was approached to enter the Commonwealth of Australia but declined and six years later it was recognized in its own right as a Dominion. For the purposes of this study Cape Colony, Natal and Transvaal joining, officially, in May 1910 with the Orange Free State to create the Union of South Africa was the final step in this developmental process.

There were many advocates who supported such moves. The great British radical Joseph Chamberlain had told the House of Commons in London in 1900 that relations with the self-governing colonies depended 'entirely on their free will and absolute consent'. At the 1902 Colonial Conference his appeal for integration was sober and serious and his eloquence did not conceal his belief in the need to re-examine Britain's Imperial organization and how it worked. As he told his peers at Westminster, the time had come to tell the visiting statesmen that their help was needed. 'The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate. We have borne the burden for many years. We think it is time that our children should assist us to support it.'6 The conference held five years later was designated 'Imperial' rather than 'Colonial', and a new word entered the political dictionaries as it was agreed that the term 'Dominion' would in future be used instead of 'self-governing colonies'. This change in nomenclature was intended to help remove any sense of inferiority, and had a generally positive effect. The eventual outcome of this meeting was something approaching an organized system for collecting, analysing and disseminating information, allocating resources and pursuing a comprehensive grand strategy.7 At the 1911 Imperial Conference this understanding was first tested as the British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, warned the visiting Dominion leaders about Germany's European intentions and what, if they proved successful, this would mean for the British Empire. The message was now spread that if the centre were to collapse their future would be in jeopardy, and for the first time the Dominions had been 'initiated into the secrets of the foreign policy being pursued'.8

The Dominions' subsequent war efforts made it clear they were 'states that were in the process of becoming nations'.9 In August 1914 the British government announced that it intended to defend Belgium's recently violated neutrality. Although this committed it to war with Germany, none of the Dominions hesitated in offering their broadly unconditional backing of the decision. This support came despite a period during which a number of senior Dominion figures had expressed growing anxieties about their relationship with London. Few doubts existed within the British government, however, that Dominion assistance would be offered.10 With large populations of, in many cases, only recently arrived British settlers, emotional ties and moral concerns about the wider implications of German actions provided obvious stimuli for participation.11 At the beginning of the conflict the British Empire covered some 13 million square miles, within which there were nearly 500 million inhabitants. From this total the four white Dominions alone provided over 1,309,000 men, sending troops to fight not just in France but to every front in which fighting took place, from Samoa to Siberia. Vimy, Gallipoli and Delville Wood were just some of the celebrated battles in which the Dominion forces played a prominent part. New Zealand alone voluntarily sent about 20 per cent of its male population abroad. And with such a high level of involvement casualties were proportionately