“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The final lines of Percy Shelley’s great sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ teach us that civilisation is a fragile and brittle thing and, though however strong and omnipotent it may seem, it can easily fall and sink into the endless barrens of time, leaving only its desolated edifices behind.
The British Empire was the largest empire this world has ever seen. It far surpassed the great Roman Empire and fierce Mongol Empire; it was a towering entity which oversaw some great victories, but at the terrible cost of millions of lives. But now, much like our dear friend Ozymandias, it seems a relic of past times and is scarcely talked about. We can say with some certainty that it took its last dying breath some decades ago and is now resting peacefully in the pages of history. However, some may argue that it still lives on in some pseudo-imperialist form, this form being the Commonwealth. One might argue that the Commonwealth is, metaphorically, the statue of Ozymandias and serves only as a crumbling relic of the past. Whilst others may disagree stating that the Commonwealth is a unifying community of nations working together for ‘prosperity, democracy and peace’. It is certainly a complicated and multifaceted issue, and if we wish to understand it, we must first look at the history.
The Commonwealth began in 1887 when all the leaders of the dominions of the British Empire (dominion meaning a semi-independent country but still largely controlled by Britain) met and held their first meeting. Four decades later at their meeting in 1926 they agreed that they were all equal members of a community within the British Empire. They all owed allegiance to the British king or queen, but the United Kingdom did not rule over them. This community was called the British Commonwealth of Nations. Following a couple of developments, most notably the creation of the Republic of India in 1950, they dropped the ‘British’ and the ‘Commonwealth’ was born. Only a couple years into this new birth it seemed in danger of becoming irrelevant, with the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and Britain having significantly more involvement with Europe, the commonwealth was starved on attention. In addition to this one of the key parts and attractions of the Commonwealth was the freedom members had to immigrate between countries, this was soon heavily restricted, and many were quickly realizing that they had been, as the director for the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Professor Phillip Murphy writes, “robbed of the tangible benefits that Commonwealth membership had previously been associated with it’’. This, though, was soon saved by a heroic and inspiring crusade in the 1970’s to help put a stop to the vicious South African Apartheid Movement, which reestablished the Commonwealth as this charismatic and progressive political force.
However, one could argue that the Commonwealth is the statue of Ozymandias and but a derelict artefact of past times. The Commonwealth was founded by ‘dominions’ of the empire, the head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain, and historically it was an outgrowth of the British Empire. There are perfect grounds to argue that the Commonwealth is but a pseudo-empire, masking itself in the façade of being a ‘community’.
But in reality and on closer inspection, although it had its roots in colonialism it has far transcended them, I believe it is a wonderful force for good in the world and it represents a family of nations striving for ‘prosperity, democracy and peace’. I’m sure that the Empire’s Ozymandias is still standing half sunken in the barrens of some desolate waste land, and I can say with some certainty that it is not the Commonwealth.
Jay Frederick Palombella (07/01/21)
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