Métodos de determinación de la potencia

For much of the nineteenth-century Australia would operate as the mode of Great Britain in the Pacific (Dubow, 2009). Originally, serving as a penal colony for Britain, the ‘termination of transportation to the eastern Australian colonies in the 1840s and 1850s helped to reduce some of the negative publicity previously associated with free migration there’ (Bridge and Fedorowich, 2003a: 4). As a result,

‘Australia developed, and came almost to full stature, as a European settlement on the other side of the world, which remained European in its customs and manners’

(Miller, 1965: 159). This was most apparent in relation to British culture, where McGregor (2006) notes that:

Britishness was the source of heritage, history, culture and symbols, that made Australia heir to a glorious past … Aborigines did not have a ‘history’ in the sense demanded by late-nineteenth and early twentieth century nationalists.

Relics of humanity in a prehistoric phase, their past was inglorious, their present deplorable and their future extinction (2006: 502)

As a result, British history provided a key sense of national cohesion within Australia, a process that underscored both Australian and British attachments (Van Duinen, 2013). This is echoed by Van Duinen (2013), who argues that ‘These identities [Australian and British] interacted at different times and in different ways in response to shifting national and international imperatives but, rather than being antagonistic, they were ambivalent or intermingling, or even mutually reinforcing’ (2013: 346).

Accordingly, throughout both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Australianness would reflect an acceptance and negotiation of Britishness, exhibiting a degree of mutuality between the two (McGregor, 2006).

In particular, for the Australian middle classes, a sense of Britishness proved to be an important part of their ‘national’ identity.³¹ As Cashman (1992) elaborates:

middle-class Australians viewed themselves as dual citizens, as much British as Australian; they were citizens both of a particular nation and a wider empire. In the minds of middle-class Australia, there was no clear distinction between an Englishman or a Scot and an Australian. The essential difference was between a metropolitan and a colonial citizen. The common reference to Britain as ‘home’

underline the strength of the British attachment. A successful return to England or Scotland was a desirable form of progression for middle-class Australians.

Most regarded ‘home’ as culturally superior (Cashman, 1992: 128)

Indeed, it was a colonial middle class that provided the force of pro-imperial sentiment during the nineteenth-century, with a greater proportion of these individuals originating from England and Scotland (Cashman, 1992). Consequently, when

‘indigenous nationalism began to emerge from the 1860s, it was not in any sense anti-British; rather, it was decidedly Anglicist and expressed in terms of Anglo-Australian ideals’ (Cashman, 1992: 128).

In many respects, similar national motivations can also be observed within Canada. Korneski’s (2007) study of social division within the city of Winnipeg notes that:

it was obvious and often deeply unsettling, to many middle-class observers that a large number of settlers were from an array of kingdoms and countries.

Britishness defined in the [ethnic way] … was appealing because, even though there may have been no obvious core ‘ethnie’, nationalists could maintain that with a measure of diligence on their part, a still-developing, linguistically and ethnically uniform, fixed Canadian type would be British, meaning that it would conform to the politico-ethical principles that were common to the most

‘advanced’ and globally predominant segments of humanity. They could hold that the diverse collection of men and women within Canada could be ‘refined’

into Britishness, meaning that they could be infused with the qualities necessary to realize the ideally functioning liberal-capitalist society nationalists envisaged (2007: 169)

Importantly, throughout this period a flexible conception of Canadian identity can be

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31 Pietsch’s (2010) examination of the diaries of J.T. Wilson (a young Scottish medical student who between 1884 and 1887 travelled to Australia), notes that, ‘Australia seemed very much to be a part of Britain’ (2010: 444). Importantly, for Wilson, this was an Australia where ‘Scots played a prominent role’ (Pietsch, 2010: 444).

observed (Hastings, 2008; Korneski, 2007). In particular, ‘English-Canadian commentators often sought to explain and negotiate Canada’s status in relation to both the British metropole and the other colonies’ (Hastings, 2008: 8). In doing so, imperial connections with Britain provided a source of pride and protection from its North American neighbours (Owram, 2001). Indeed, British-Canadian relations would be heavily influenced via the movement of Scottish settlers after the American War of Independence (Devine, 2011). Although ‘highly critical of the British establishment in the home context, in Canada the Scots came to occupy a central place in government, and emerged as a highly loyalist, pro-British element against the pressures exerted by both France and America’ (Pugh, 2008: 113).

Elsewhere within Canada, Anglophone dominance would be strengthened, most notably, within Quebec. While Quebec would maintain strong cultural attachments to its Francophone origins, Anglophones would maintain ‘a privileged and superordinate position in Québec society, particularly because they controlled Québec’s economy’

(Pettinicchio, 2012: 2). This dominance would continue throughout the first half of the twentieth-century (Pettinicchio, 2012). Consequently, despite the ‘cultural division of labour’ within Quebec (Pettinicchio, 2012: 2), Canadian identity throughout the nineteenth-century existed through an imperial context that was closely connected to the British Isles (Korneski, 2007; Owram, 2001).

Within New Zealand, Maori culture would remain a residual part of contemporary New Zealand society providing an important reminder of New Zealand’s position within a wider imperial collective. In fact, New Zealand’s support for Britain in both the First and Second World War would be based upon a sense of imperial identification. Dubow (2009) notes that:

For Australia, New Zealand and Canada, participation in these conflicts showed that it was possible to express one’s colonial nationalism through the medium of imperialism … New Zealanders could become ‘better Britons’, as politicians and opinion-formers in the early years of the twentieth century promised, namely, to outdo the mother country (and their Australian cousins) by exemplifying British virtues and eliminating its vices (2009: 14)

Consequently, the distance travelled by New Zealand forces during the First and Second World War was not ‘an impediment to be regretted as an endeavour to be celebrated’ (Jeffery, 2008: 454). Therefore, whereas in New Zealand ‘the maturing of a native-born generation [had] led to self-conscious attempts to express a new identity

in Native Associations, nationalistic literary journals, and through competition in sport’ many did not see ‘this nationalism as in any way contradictory to a continued dependence on British markets and British naval force’ (Dalziel, 1999 [italics added]).

Here, a British imperial identity could be used to fulfil ‘nationalist aspiration for unity while maintaining solidarity with the wider British world’ (McGregor, 2006: 501).

Dalziel (1999) adds:

A strident Imperialism and the presentation of New Zealand as a social laboratory for the new century were both attempts by a settler society to convince themselves and others that they had secured a home and an identity yet remained part of an important global community (1999: 595)

As a result, New Zealand nationalism would often attempt to highlight its ethnic homogeneity with the ‘Mother Country’ in what Belich (2001) defines as a process of

‘re-colonization’. In contrast to ‘the steady development of national maturity and independence’ (Belich, 2001: 182), Belich (2001) argues that New Zealand’s ‘re-colonization’ represented ‘a tightening of links with the metropolis’ (Belich, 2001:

182). Consequently, re-colonization resulted in the consolidation of colonial myth-history. While this served to distinguish New Zealand from Australia it also helped to transform its national image during the twentieth-century. In fact, relations between Britain and the dominion’s would undergo a number of transformations during the twentieth-century. The following section will explore this in further detail.

2.4. A loosening of attachments: The Commonwealth of Nations, The European