The first crack in the facade appeared a hundred years ago, when Britain ratified a peace treaty to end the rebel war that had rendered the Crown’s authority unenforceable in much of Ireland. Over the next quarter century, this rift would spread to other colonies—first in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, then in Africa and the Caribbean—weakening the edifice until the aftershocks of World War II caused imperial collapse. Burmese military defeats in Hong Kong had weakened British prestige, and the undisputed top dog in the post-war world – the United States – saw the British and French empires as liabilities in the new ideological struggle with the Soviet Union.
A (relatively) smooth transition
Avoiding the violent disintegration of the French and Portuguese empires, Queen Elizabeth II made a surprisingly smooth transition from Empire to Commonwealth, a voluntary union that remained open even to those former colonies – the majority of them – that chose to become republics (or restore their own royal lineages, like Swaziland/Eswatini and Lesotho). Those who toppled the monarchy included the “jewel in the crown”, India – which achieved independence in 1947 and declared itself a republic two years later – and the successor states of Pakistan and Bangladesh. It also included all former British colonies in Africa, which gained independence between 1957 and 1968. School students wave Indian national flags during celebrations to mark India’s 75th Independence Day on Red Road in Kolkata on August 15, 2022. (Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images) As recently as 50 years ago, the Queen was head of state in only about a quarter of Britain’s newly independent colonies – including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, former Caribbean colonies from the Bahamas to Belize and a handful of nations of the Pacific such as Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. In recent years, the Commonwealth has grown to take in new members who were never even in the British Empire. The former Belgian colony of Rwanda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit this year. The former Belgian colony of Burundi has applied for membership. Previously suspended countries such as Fiji, Gambia and the Maldives were readmitted, and some that left (such as Pakistan) or were expelled (such as South Africa) were rejoined. (Zimbabwe withdrew in 2003 and applied to rejoin in 2018.) Only Britain’s oldest colony stubbornly refuses to join the Commonwealth. For some members of the Irish Republican Army, accepting anything less than full independence in 1922 was too bitter a pill to swallow. The new Irish Free State saw a bitter civil war between its former liberators over whether to accept the only peace deal on offer or hold out for more. A bouquet of flowers is left outside the British Embassy in Dublin, Thursday, September 8, 2022, following the announcement of the death of Queen Elizabeth II. (Brian Lawless/Associated Press) The pro-Treaty side carried the day and for 27 years after the War of Independence, the Irish Free State was a dominion like Canada. But memories of oppression, famine and exile, culminating in forced partition, left the Irish determined to have nothing to do with their former colonial master. In 1949, Ireland seized Britain’s weakened post-war state to declare a full republic and leave the Commonwealth for good.
Republican Voices in the West Indies
The recent tour of the Caribbean by William and Catherine, then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, showed how vivid memories of colonialism remain there too. First they were forced to cancel a visit to Belize, where the Mayan locals objected to their presence. Afterwards, in Jamaica, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told the couple that his island nation would “move forward” to “fulfil our real aspirations as an independent, developed, prosperous country”. The Jamaican government has a timetable. It wants to become a democracy in time for the next general election in 2025. Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, attend the Caribbean Military Academy commissioning parade at the Jamaica Defense Force Camp Up Park in Kingston, Jamaica on March 24, 2022. (Ricardo Makyn/AFP/Getty Images) Last year, Jamaica said it would formally ask the UK government to pay reparations for overseeing the forced transfer of some 600,000 enslaved Africans to sugar and banana plantations on the island. With nearly three million people, Jamaica is by far the largest of the Caribbean kingdoms. His departure from the British crown would mean that four out of five people in former British colonies around the Caribbean would live under a democratic system of government.
“Complete the Circle of Independence”
The British in the nineteenth century went from being the world’s largest slavers to the most ardent abolitionists, and the Royal Navy tried to suppress the African slave trade decades before the US, Cuba or Brazil emancipated the slaves. But it’s also true that the wealth of the royal family, and of British cities like Liverpool, rests in part on the stolen labor of generations of enslaved people—people who were never compensated for what was taken from them, while slave owners were compensated handsomely after abolition. Plantation slavery in the British Caribbean was replaced with a system of discrimination that effectively limited the franchise to a small, mostly white elite, while the majority continued to face harsh working conditions and even harsher repression if they rebelled. However, most of the British Caribbean continued to accept the Queen as head of state after independence. Only Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica chose the democratic alternative. Singer Rihanna chats with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley. (Jackson Weaver/CBC) Last year, however, a second wave of secession appeared to be beginning when Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley led her country away from the British crown in a ceremony attended by the island’s favorite daughter, Rihanna. And after the Queen’s death, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne announced his own plans to call a referendum on the monarchy in the same timeframe as Jamaica. “This is not an act of hostility or some difference between Antigua and Barbuda and the monarchy,” he said. “But it is the last step to complete this cycle of independence, to ensure that we are truly a sovereign nation.”
Australia: What’s the alternative?
Barbados chose an easy path to a democracy by simply declaring the old governor general as its new president. But larger nations—especially those with federal systems—face more complex issues. Australia’s attempt to leave the monarchy behind in the 1990s was based on the fact that abolishing one system requires replacing it with another. From the mid-1990s onwards, opinion polls consistently showed that more Australians were in favor of leaving the British monarchy. But the alternative Australian politicians proposed in the 1999 referendum – which included a president chosen by politicians rather than directly by voters – was widely seen as a power grab at the expense of the people. In the end, opponents of a democracy won a come-from-behind victory with nearly 55 percent of the vote. A few years later, Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard pledged to let the issue stand for the rest of Queen Elizabeth’s lifetime. With the Queen’s departure, there may be a new window for the Australian Republicans – who responded to her death with a subdued statement. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who led the Republican side in the referendum, has long argued that Australians are “Elizabethans” rather than true monarchists – that their affection was focused on the individual rather than the office. Some polls suggest that support for a democracy in Australia may actually have declined since the 1990s. (It also shows a wide gender gap – women everywhere are more likely to support the monarchy than men.) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the nation on the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Friday, September 9, 2022. (ABC via AP) But Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a republican and, after taking office in May, appointed Matt Thistlethwaite to the new role of assistant minister for democracy, tasked with planning a transition from the monarchy. Albanese is one of many Australian Labor politicians who have never forgotten the Crown’s role in a 1975 constitutional crisis that saw unelected Governor-General John Kerr dismiss elected Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Letters between Buckingham Palace and his Australian viceroy were released in 2020 after a lengthy legal battle. They reveal that the then Prince Charles (now Charles III) had discussed with Kerr sacking Whitlam months before it happened. Albanese has said he plans to make no moves during his first term, which ends in 2025. But not all of Australia’s party leaders share his patience.
NZ is in no rush
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was quick to dismiss any speculation that her government was considering such a move. “I’ve never felt the urgency,” he said. “There are so many challenges we face. This is a big, important conversation. Don’t think it would or should happen quickly.” But he added: “I think that’s where New Zealand will go in time. I think it’s likely to happen in my lifetime.” Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, wave to onlookers from their open-top car in October 1981 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Anwar Hussein/Getty Images) New Zealand has come a long way since the Queen first visited in 1952 – when the Auckland City Council evicted Indigenous Maori from Okahu…
