Independent Personality: National Identity Formation in Britain's Dominions and India

i Spanning the globe, the British Empire was a political entity unlike any the world has ever seen and its decolonization was truly a global phenomenon to match. Beginning in 1931 and lasting through much of the twentieth century, the British Empire steadily began to grant self-government and full autonomy to its member states, releasing " forty-nine territories ... in the years 1947-80 " alone. 1 Yet, imperial policy modifications were not the only transitions necessary for colonies to gain their autonomy. Radical changes were occurring across the Empire socially, culturally, and intellectually—including changes in the way that colonial groups thought about themselves. To elaborate, in order for nationalist movements to develop in the colonies, their populations had to redefine themselves in terms outside the British Empire; before convincing the British that they constituted a nation, a colony first had to believe it themselves. Furthermore, because this self-understanding is a necessary precursor to a nationalist movement, it is logical that a pattern in the process may exist. In order to investigate, this study establishes a theoretical framework of changes that must occur during a nationalist movement's bid for autonomy. Through the lens of this framework, I intend to analyze the ways that colonies began to conceive of themselves as separate, distinct nations—specifically in the cases of the Dominions and India—paying particular attention to recurring processes. 2 By doing 1 Brian Lapping, End of Empire (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), xv. Lapping is a former professional journalist turned documentarian: End of Empire is a book written in tandem with his documentary series by the same title. 2 In itself, the thesis of a patterned process of decolonization has been pursued by other scholars before me; however, my research is unique in its focus upon the Dominions and India within the British Empire as well as the emphasis on their similarity in spite of their considerably differing contexts. Examples of previous works that supported the existence of a pattern include Trevor Lloyd, Empire: The History of the which proposes that the Dominions were an integral part of the overall decolonization process for the British Empire. For an example of research that does not directly propose a recurring pattern across the Empire, see Robert 1 so, I intend to demonstrate that the changes that occurred in each colony's understanding of their " nation " were quite similar, even though they produced widely …