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Looking for ideas on the Imperial Federation concept

Dan1988

DO! YOU! HEAR THE SONG OF PEACE!
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So, I've a few things that have been floating around in my head and I'd like to "test-drive" them on you guys.

I'm thinking of rebooting my Fallen Madonna TL I had started at the other place and had started (but haven't finished yet) reposting here. Eventually, I want to continue reposting old updates here (along with a couple of additional Great War ones), but there's one thing I want to retcon, but as I'm not terribly familiar with British political history in many places, I want to posit a thought here. I want to try taking a different tack with the whole Imperial Federation concept that occasionally gets thrown in conversation as one way to reform the British Empire.

Now, some of us may have heard about the concept of Imperial Federation and know that it was championed as one way to resolve both the Irish Question and the conundrum of managing the future of the Empire. It was also, in turn, championed by a minority and that in some quarters the ideas was not that well-received. Alongside many of of the familiar issues, such as tensions between the Dominions and the UK and fears that a super-parliament would impinge on the Dominions' autonomy, one of the main problems as I see it is what the historian Geoffrey Blainey calls the tyranny of distance. That is, the further remote geographically a colony is from the UK, the more that remoteness shapes the identity and culture of the people in that colony. Sometimes you get extremes, such as the expat nostalgia found among the British communities in the colonies and protectorates (I'm thinking here of the actor Richard E. Grant's recollections of growing up in Swaziland/eSwatini within an expat British community there, or groups like the Anglo-Canadians (which basically took Anglophilia to the extreme, affecting even their natural speech) who used to exist before the 1960s), and other times you have the difficulties of managing such a Federation with the core units so far away that the remoteness - and perception that they will never be seen as equal to the metropole - creating distinctive identities which reflect this ambiguity and anxiety combined with low self-esteem.

Thus, a federation of equals such as what the basic Imperial Federation concept suggests would be problematic. I had initially considered directly integrating (in a piecemeal fashion, of course) the Dominions into a federal UK where Home Rule All Round would be a reality, but ran into the realization that with a UK divided into such small components, the only way it would work would be if the component units were equally small and, to mitigate the tyranny of distance problem, be close enough geographically to the UK where it would be feasible. Places like Newfoundland, Gibraltar, Malta, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, some of the Caribbean holdings would work for a direct integration into a federal UK; places like Canada, OTOH, would not (also, for reasons that I don't know why but seem to creep up time and time again in my readings, Canada seems to be used as a guinea pig for the rest of the Empire as far as political and Constitutional development goes). So, I leave you guys with this question: are there any other ways to make an Imperial Federation work outside of the usual trope of creating a Imperial super-Parliament?
 
one of the main problems as I see it is what the historian Geoffrey Blainey calls the tyranny of distance. That is, the further remote geographically a colony is from the UK, the more that remoteness shapes the identity and culture of the people in that colony. Sometimes you get extremes, such as the expat nostalgia found among the British communities in the colonies and protectorates (I'm thinking here of the actor Richard E. Grant's recollections of growing up in Swaziland/eSwatini within an expat British community there, or groups like the Anglo-Canadians (which basically took Anglophilia to the extreme, affecting even their natural speech) who used to exist before the 1960s), and other times you have the difficulties of managing such a Federation with the core units so far away that the remoteness - and perception that they will never be seen as equal to the metropole - creating distinctive identities which reflect this ambiguity and anxiety combined with low self-esteem.
New Zealanders were potentially one of the most anglophilic populations, despite or possibly because of the distance aspect - we only started dropping RP-esque accents on television in the late 70s and 80s. A lot of this was down to economics and, to a lesser extent, defence: Britain was the major export market for our produce, and were the only people interested in saving us from the Dastardly Russians, Chinese and Japanese. Until we realised that they weren't actually interested and that America was, of course.

In Imperial conferences in the 1900s and 1910s, Joseph Ward often made complex proposals for permanent conferences of Dominion delegates, some of which had a legislative role. The general picture would be that Ward would make a confused three-hour speech explaining why we needed closer co-operation and how his plan would achieve this; everyone else would be either completely zoned-out, confused or keen to get to the next item on the agenda but would vaguely not-hate the thing in principle; and then it would be nixed by the Canadians, who really didn't like the idea. Laurier especially.

If you want to get psychological, I guess you could characterise it as low self-esteem resulting in a desperation for approval by doing what we thought Daddy wanted - but of course, we were mistaken on this point.
 
Thus, a federation of equals such as what the basic Imperial Federation concept suggests would be problematic. I had initially considered directly integrating (in a piecemeal fashion, of course) the Dominions into a federal UK where Home Rule All Round would be a reality, but ran into the realization that with a UK divided into such small components, the only way it would work would be if the component units were equally small and, to mitigate the tyranny of distance problem, be close enough geographically to the UK where it would be feasible. Places like Newfoundland, Gibraltar, Malta, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, some of the Caribbean holdings would work for a direct integration into a federal UK; places like Canada, OTOH, would not (also, for reasons that I don't know why but seem to creep up time and time again in my readings, Canada seems to be used as a guinea pig for the rest of the Empire as far as political and Constitutional development goes). So, I leave you guys with this question: are there any other ways to make an Imperial Federation work outside of the usual trope of creating a Imperial super-Parliament?

I’m of the opinion that the smaller colonies such as the ones you mentioned (or even potentially a place like New Zealand) could be integrated properly into the UK with seats in the British Houses of Parliament and everything [1], and depending on when this occurs (and which of the colonies we are talking about) it could even occur without devolution.

For places such as Canada and Australia, an Imperial Parliament would be needed, although it could end up very similar to the British Houses of Parliament that we have today.

[1] This nearly happened with Malta in OTL. In 1956 there was a referendum in which the majority of people in Malta voted for the colony to be integrated truly into the United Kingdom with representation in the Commons and everything. Unfortunately, the result of the referendum was never implemented. Democracy was betrayed.
 
I’m of the opinion that the smaller colonies such as the ones you mentioned (or even potentially a place like New Zealand) could be integrated properly into the UK with seats in the British Houses of Parliament and everything [1], [. . .]

For places such as Canada and Australia, an Imperial Parliament would be needed, although it could end up very similar to the British Houses of Parliament that we have today.

[1] This nearly happened with Malta in OTL. In 1956 there was a referendum in which the majority of people in Malta voted for the colony to be integrated truly into the United Kingdom with representation in the Commons and everything. Unfortunately, the result of the referendum was never implemented. Democracy was betrayed.

Makes sense, though of course it all depends on how in the latter case the Imperial Parliament gets set up. Ultimately, as I used a 19th century POD (or, rather, a series of) I can make things flexible enough to make something like that work.

New Zealanders were potentially one of the most anglophilic populations, despite or possibly because of the distance aspect - we only started dropping RP-esque accents on television in the late 70s and 80s. A lot of this was down to economics and, to a lesser extent, defence: Britain was the major export market for our produce, and were the only people interested in saving us from the Dastardly Russians, Chinese and Japanese. Until we realised that they weren't actually interested and that America was, of course.

[. . .]


If you want to get psychological, I guess you could characterise it as low self-esteem resulting in a desperation for approval by doing what we thought Daddy wanted - but of course, we were mistaken on this point.

Which neatly summarizes the tyranny of distance problem; in this case a mix of Anglophilia and low self-esteem probably shaped by being one of the last settler colonies. However, I'm more interested in your middle paragraph:

In Imperial conferences in the 1900s and 1910s, Joseph Ward often made complex proposals for permanent conferences of Dominion delegates, some of which had a legislative role. The general picture would be that Ward would make a confused three-hour speech explaining why we needed closer co-operation and how his plan would achieve this; everyone else would be either completely zoned-out, confused or keen to get to the next item on the agenda but would vaguely not-hate the thing in principle; and then it would be nixed by the Canadians, who really didn't like the idea. Laurier especially.

Could you elaborate on some of Joseph Ward's proposals? You're peaking my interest here.
 
Hmm, sounds like Ward was indeed being bold on that front. No wonder why his proposals fell on deaf ears. But maybe there could be a kernel of something which could be saved.

Still seeing what other arrangements could be used.
 
So, I leave you guys with this question: are there any other ways to make an Imperial Federation work outside of the usual trope of creating a Imperial super-Parliament?

Imperial super-parliament suggestions came in the late nineteenth century. Before it, there were a lot of suggestions for colonial representation in Parliament, or even having non-voting MPs in parliament - here's an article on that. And even in the late nineteenth century, many talked about other ideas. One was how, properly, it would make far more sense to include colonial representation in executive institutions like the Privy Council than in Parliament, since after all white colonies had large legislative autonomy at this point. There was discussion of abolishing the Colonial Office and replacing it with a council of colonial representatives, or of making the Board of Trade into a colonial council. And there was talk of merging the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (supreme court of the colonies) and the Law Lords (supreme court of Britain) to create one single court for the empire - this step, or something like it, seems important in making an Imperial Federation.

Before the Great Reform Act, a number of parliament seats were effectively owned by wealthy landowners, nabobs etc. hailing from the colonies, with the influence of West Indies slaveholders being very sizeable in particular. One criticism of the Great Reform Act was that it removed this representation. The great Radical MP Joseph Hume suggested colonial representation in parliament to alleviate this, but this went nowhere. Notably, the PM Lord John Russell believed in colonial representation as a way to blunt the democratization of the House of Commons, along with other weird suggestions like seats for chambers of commerce or guilds. So, colonial representation was a thing for most of the nineteenth century, but imperial super-parliament stuff only came later.
 
I've done some research for an academic paper on the subject with regards to its popularity in Canada, and the conclusion I more or less reached was that as much as there was genuine and organic popularity for Imperial Federation, the powers that be on both sides of the pond, sans the Colonial Office under Joseph Chamberlain, were considerably interested in the subject. Even Macdonald hardly wanted to surrender Canada's legislative sovereignty to that of Westminster and was willing to demonstrate a degree of independence in rejecting British adventurism - most prominently his refusal to send canoe militia to take part in the Nile Expedition and extension of National Policy tariffs to some British goods. The process of Imperial Federation might have reached a dead end with Laurier, but Macdonald had already been fighting it for the previous decades.

The fundamental problem of consolidating Empire-wide councils and legislative bodies, irrespective of the powers they wielded in practice, is that the loss of said power would diminish the autonomy that the ruling colonial elite were accustomed to possessing. Add to that a lack of cohesive strategy and disregard for actual policy as opposed to rhetoric (the splits between liberal and conservative imperialists over the role of India in a federalised Empire come to mind) and that pretty much highlights the biggest flaws of cultivating a pro-Imperial Federation bloc outside the United Kingdom.

The solution to this would probably have to be to develop imperial sentiment such that it could be a sizable political bloc, a feat which it never achieved even in Ontario despite substantial pro-federation support among the province's Anglo Tories. This isn't terribly difficult if you manage to get folks like George Denison or Stephen Leacock into positions of real political power, while cratering the Liberals, but the rhetoric would matter as well (e.g. the Loyalist heritage of the Canadian landed elite vs Leacock's populist message of "Imperialism As Anti-Colonialism"). Them taking power concurrent with the ascension of the British Tory radicals like Randolph Churchill and Joseph Chamberlain would probably set the ground for both to bring at least Canada closer in line with Britain. Even then, they're sure to face stiff resistance from the merchant class, free traders, western farmers, and pro-American segments of society, so significantly worse Anglo-American relations could seal the deal.

Even then I highly doubt that surrendering the legislative authority of Ottawa and trading it for seats in Westminster would go over well even for many Anglophiles - Macdonald certainly didn't want to do it. I do feel that what's more likely to result would be an Imperial Confederation that could grow out of an Imperial Preference tariff policy or a common defence policy. Even then this is going to take a lot of willingness to see it through, as Chamberlain proposed these very things at the 1902 Colonial Conference and was thoroughly rejected, with only New Zealand showing the slightest interest in a common imperial defence policy. The demise of the legislative bodies of the Dominions and colonies, or assertion of their inferiority to an Empire-spanning Parliament, would face even stiffer opposition. So it's likely that Empire-wide bureaucratic bodies and institutions would be a lot weaker, with constitutional and parliamentary sovereignty devolved accordingly.
 
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