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The Imperial Conference1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The decision to hold a meeting of the Imperial Conference in 1937 while its members are attending the king's coronation, is strictly in accordance with precedent, for in the past these conferences have been frequently associated with Empire ceremonies on a grandiose scale. The first Conference, indeed, owed its very existence to a gathering of this kind, when the colonial premiers who had assembled to honour Queen Victoria at her Jubilee in 1887, met together to discuss informally topics of general imperial interest. The Conference of 1937 will thus celebrate not only the coronation of the new king, but its own golden jubilee as well.
The somewhat haphazard venture of 1887 proved to be so successful that it was followed by another meeting at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee ten years later, and a third Conference met when King Edward VII was crowned in 1902. Whether the pomp and panoply of Empire on these occasions were calculated to stir the emotions and give the colonial delegates an increased sense of solidarity and power, or whether the lavish hospitality was supposed to generate a conciliatory spirit and a willingness to forget inter-imperial differences, is not known; but such things have been suspected and frequently alleged. The real reason was doubtless much more simple and not nearly so sinister, namely, the prosaic one of convenience, combined with the British readiness to exalt accidental occurrences into useful precedents. At any rate, the Imperial (it was originally called Colonial) Conference was speedily adopted as a useful device to secure discussion and co-operation in an Empire where the centrifugal fofces were gaining in strength at an alarming rate.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , February 1937 , pp. 23 - 39
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1937
Footnotes
1
This article is taken in part from the author's forthcoming book The Development of Dominion Status, 1900-1936 (Oxford University Press).
References
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