"The Blind Forces Rising in the East of Asia": Britain, the Dominions, and Asian Immigration, 1894-1924 (original) (raw)
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Britain and the World, 2016
Throughout the 1920s Canadian politicians, immigration officials, eugenicists, educationalists, and political commentators talked about the need to 'Canadianize' all immigrants who arrived in the dominion, including those from the 'mother country'. However, this did not mean that Ottawa was out to 'de-Britannicize' those arriving from the United Kingdom. British migrants, a crucial component that underpinned Canada's cultural identity at this time, were given preferred status because their common heritage and shared cultural values mirrored those of most Anglo-Canadians. Indeed, 'Britishness' made up the bedrock of Anglo-Canadian 'national' identity. Therefore, at one level British migrants were seen as less problematic and easier to acculturate to the Canadian way of life because for many Canadians being British and Canadian were one and the same. As Alan Sears has argued, the crux of the problem in 'forging a "national people" [hinged on] defining some people as more naturally Canadian (or capable of becoming Canadian) than others'. 2 However, the development of a 'national people' was not an attempt by Canada to break the bonds
The Creation of New States and the Collapse of Old Empires In the XX Century, Acta of the 44th ICMH Congress of Military History, 2018
‘Commonwealth’ and ‘dominion’ are two terms often used in history. In the 20th century, however, their political use was strictly linked to the evolution of the British Empire. Since 1907, when the category of Dominion was officially born, the soon-to-be-called British Commonwealth of Nations walked through a path in which the colonial rule between the white self-governing colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) and Great Britain created a bond looking like an alliance between equal States. Not by chance, at the end of the Second World War, the former white self-governing colonies were already enjoying full independence without fighting any war of independence against the metropolitan power. This was quite unique for an Empire embracing every corner of the world. In 1917, the Imperial War Conference, held in London during the First World War, paved the way towards the recognition of full sovereignty for the Dominions. Indeed, the British government acknowledged that the white self-governing colonies had the right to be an influential actor in handling the foreign affairs of the Empire. The Chanak crisis in 1922 showed that Britain, voluntarily or not, could not escape the fact that the Dominions already played the role of almost sovereign actors in international politics. The Balfour declaration of 1926 maintained that Britain and the white Dominions were at the same political level. As a consequence, the Statute of Westminster of 1931 gave a de facto independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The British Commonwealth of Nations, thus, was eventually born. Every new nation adopted the Statute in different years, and each of them could recognize since 1931 that, in theory, they were now able to pursue their own foreign policy independently from British interests. In practice, the security of the British Empire was still interconnected. Indeed, the bond uniting the Commonwealth became apparent at the outbreak of the Second World War, when the nowindependent Dominions entered the war alongside the former Motherland. Between 1907 and 1948, the Dominion category was flexible enough to be used in other cases: the Irish Free State, for example, or India and Pakistan. However, the ‘old’ white Dominions always enjoyed a different political treatment, leading to their independence without firing any shot against the metropolitan power.
'The evolution of Commonwealth citizenship, 1945-48 in Canada, Britain and Australia’
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2012
The conventional wisdom has been that the Canadian Citizenship Act and the British Nationality and Australian Citizenship Act demonstrated the growth of a local nationalism after the Second World War. In reality, the situation was more complicated. Both English-speaking Canada and Australia still regarded themselves as British nations. The passage of the Canadian Act was an illustration of the bicultural nature of that country, which developments during the war had brought to the fore. The Australian Act was simply a reaction to the Canadian Act, as the latter had undermined the common code of British subject status across the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the British Nationality Act was primarily an attempt to preserve the common status of British subjects throughout the Commonwealth and maintain the integrity of this organisation during a period when it was being rapidly transformed.
Japan Forum, 2016
Great Britain was the first of the major Powers that revised its unequal treaty with Japan, recognizing the success of Japan's modernization and its growing role in the international arena. However, British Columbia perceived Japanese residents as a threat to 'the British character' of this regions' population profile. After the movement against Japanese residents in British Columbia peaked during the anti-Japanese riots in Vancouver in September of 1907, Canadian Minister of Labor Rodolphe Lemieux headed a diplomatic delegation to Tokyo to negotiate the restriction of Japanese immigration to Canada. The dispatch of this mission revealed some of the complexities in relations between the Colonial and Foreign Offices in London on the one hand and the Dominion's and British Columbian governments on the other. Based on previously unused primary sources, this article will examine the interplay between the policy towards Japanese migrants in the British Dominion of Canada and the British policy towards Japan as a nation.