Nationalism and Democracy in the British Commonwealth: Some General Trends

The two dynamic political forces in the British Commonwealth are those of nationalism and democracy, and they are in close alliance. This fact is most evident in the older dominions, which were colonized from the British Isles, or, in the case of Canada and South Africa, partially colonized also from France and Holland. The genesis of their nationality was evident when as colonies they gropingly aspired to become autonomous political communities, standing on their own feet, seeking to shape their own future, not isolated from the metropolitan power, but also not subservient to it. In them the prevailing concept of a nation has been that of a people organized to achieve within the state the ends of popular freedom and political order. Owing to the liberating and levelling ways of the frontier, a new land provided special scope for the ideas and sentiments of democracy and hence the more readily generated among the people a potent sentiment for itself.