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Title: The shrinking realm: Queen Elizabeth’s Commonwealth and the future of its nations
Source:
Yahoo queers
URL Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/queen-el ... rinking-nations-203450220.html
Published: Sep 17, 2022
Author: yahoo queers
Post Date: 2022-09-17 01:29:26 by Dakmar
Keywords: None
Views: 280
Comments: 1
ions under the umbrella of the association would simply be known as the Commonwealth of Nations. Upon Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne in 1952, the Commonwealth had already lost Ireland, in 1948. Eire gained its autonomy in 1921 after 800 years of British involvement, leaving only the six counties in Northern Ireland, of the 32 counties on the island, as part of the United Kingdom. During her coronation speech in 1953, the new monarch acknowledged and praised Britain’s imperial past. “I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years, but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire,” she said. Elizabeth, Britain’s longest-serving sovereign, was on the throne seven years longer than Queen Victoria, her great-great grandmother, who oversaw the expansion of Britain's colonial possessions. “[The] Queen's reign is the kind of grand rebranding for the British Empire, which was originally kind of built on an ideology that dictated that white people and their settler descendants would be in charge,” Dr. Liam Liburd, assistant professor of Black British history at Durham University in England, told Yahoo News. “The development of the Commonwealth after the Queen's coronation in 1953 can be seen as a kind of consolation prize for the British Empire.” Through the decades, the Commonwealth would see territories lost and countries depart, with some rejoining. By the 1960s, most of Britain’s colonies in Africa and Asia were independent, although some chose to remain as part of the Commonwealth, an option offered on a voluntary basis. Its most important colony in Asia left in 1997, when after 156 years, the U.K. ceded control of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. Today, the British monarch is the head of state of 14 nations, including a collection of islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans that remain as Britain’s colonial possessions. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, the Commonwealth gained a new leader, in her son and heir, King Charles III. “She began as queen of the British Empire and became the queen of the British nation, unable, and to some extent unwilling, to come to terms with the loss of empire, and with several Commonwealth nations reconsidering their ties to Britain and to the Commonwealth,” Liburd told Yahoo News. But how does the future of the Commonwealth look for King Charles’s reign and how, as British Prime Minister Liz Truss described it after the queen’s death, will “our new Carolean age” (from Carolus, the Latin version of Charles) differ from the Elizabethan age? If Queen Victoria built the Empire, will her great-great-great-grandson lose it all? Last year, Barbados became the world’s newest republic, after its citizens voted to remove the queen as their head of state. Speaking at the event celebrating the new republic, Prince Charles, a guest speaker, acknowledged the “appalling atrocity of slavery” the island had suffered. While Barbados removed the queen as its head of state, it decided to remain a member of the Commonwealth. Following in the steps of Barbados, six other countries in the Caribbean — Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, the Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica and St. Kitts and Nevis — also signaled their intent to remove the British monarch as their sovereign. The news came after two royal tours that were met with protests and public relations disasters. In Belize and Jamaica, locals called for formal apologies from the visiting royal family. “As we saw with Prince William and Princess Kate's Caribbean tour earlier this year, I think things already are changing,” Liburd told Yahoo News. “In lots of ways, the Commonwealth feels a little bit like the monarchy itself. It has a kind of anachronistic, perhaps a leftover, out-of-date, political order.” Speaking at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Rwanda in June, Charles revealed an openness to members on the evolving status of the association. “I want to say clearly, as I have said before, that each member’s constitutional arrangement, as republic or monarchy, is purely a matter for each member country to decide,” he said. “The benefit of long life brings me the experience that arrangements such as these can change, calmly and without rancor.” Closer to home, Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, proposed a date for another referendum on independence, and talks have been ongoing about Northern Ireland reunifying with the republican south. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Sky News that he would not hold an independence referendum in his first term, out of “respect and admiration” for the queen. However, he did not rule out the possibility if he was reelected. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the leader of neighboring New Zealand, said that removing the British sovereign was an inevitability, but that it was not a priority of her government. “I’ve made my view plain many times,” Ardern said after the queen’s death. “I do believe that is where New Zealand will head, in time. I believe it is likely to occur in my lifetime.” As a growing number of countries renounce their ties with the British monarchy, the waning of the Commonwealth reduces Britain’s presence on the world stage. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” is the way William Shakespeare described the burden and responsibility of leadership in the second part of his play "Henry IV." Perhaps this too is how King Charles feels about leading his shrinking realm. Poster Comment: Do you wanna dance?Elizabethan era
Decline of the Empire
New king
The future
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