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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

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This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Contents


New Zealand and the Commonwealth

From the British Empire, to the British Commonwealth, and then to the unqualified Commonwealth of Nations is a process of gradual evolution, with few prominent signposts to mark significant changes of direction. The overall process is straightforward enough, however. By the latter part of the nineteenth century a group of British colonies with substantial settler populations had achieved self-government internally, and some were reaching for self-determination in external policy. In the twentieth century, temporarily as it proved in both cases, the Union of South Africa and Southern Ireland were added to their number. During the period between the two World Wars, 1919–39, it became clear that these British countries (no longer called colonies, but normally designated “dominions” after 1907) in fact exercised considerable autonomy in international affairs and were (in this period Canada and Ireland especially) intent upon completing this process. In short, something now known as “dominion status” needed definition. This came in 1926 when such countries within the Commonwealth (including Great Britain) were described by the Balfour Report as fully self-governing, in no way dependent upon each other, and linked only through common allegiance to the British Crown. In 1931 this description was enshrined in the Imperial Statute of Westminster, the ornamental coping stone, rather than the foundation stone, of the British Commonwealth. Thus the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and (briefly) Ireland were united in an association of equals (as far as status is concerned). The union, which thus survived dependence, was partly commercial, through imperial preference, partly ideological, through similar forms of government and (in greater or lesser degree) similar traditions stemming from Great Britain and Ireland, and very largely sympathetic, through a tie of loyalty and sentiment centring upon the British Crown and the British people.

The part New Zealand played in this evolution from Empire to Commonwealth was typically subdued, as she followed, sometimes willingly enough, sometimes with grave forebodings, the course set by her larger and more strident sisters, especially Canada, where a substantial French-descended part of the population was a permanent check upon identification with Great Britain. At the series of conferences which came to be called Imperial Conferences (those of 1887 and 1897 are properly labelled “colonial”) and in her relations with Great Britain, New Zealand did at times manifest a certain intransigence, notably during Seddon's premiership. This intransigence, particularly when it arose from problems of imperial trade, imperial defence, and British policy in the Pacific Ocean, expressed a determination to make imperial relations work to New Zealand advantage in trade privileges, in defence arrangements, and in territorial aggrandisement in the Pacific. New Zealand, however, did not take the lead in demanding recognition of changes in status.

When this recognition came in the late 1920s, New Zealand's reaction was one of apprehensive reluctance. Just as Massey had been unwilling to accept the implications of his actions at the Peace Conference, so Coates and Forbes were loath to grasp the status conferred by the Statute of Westminster. New Zealand's representatives had certainly taken part in the conferences which led up to this statute, but they acted as if they were merely acceding to demands made by regrettably independent-minded Canadians and Irishmen, demands which would have been best unmade. So the Statute was not adopted by New Zealand until 1947, by which time it was about to be outmoded by even more revolutionary developments.

It could not be said that New Zealand permitted herself to be hampered by her determination to ignore the Statute. Throughout the 1930s, though formally dependent, she acted as a power in no way hampered by the British connection, and her eventual adoption of the Statute came only as a legalistic tidying-up measure – a step which made it proper to do what had already been done.

The third step in the Empire-Commonwealth evolution, that from the British Commonwealth to the Commonwealth of Nations (qualified by no limiting adjective), came after the 1939–45 war when the United Kingdom set about “demantling” her colonial empire. Indian independence in 1947 was the massive prelude to a development which transformed the Commonwealth from a group of largely British nations clustered about the Crown into an association of nations of many races, many of them republics which recognised in the monarch no more than an undefined and indefinable “Head of the Commonwealth”. The new nations which have emerged from British possessions in Asia and Africa have seen allegiance to the Crown as incompatible with their national aspirations; accordingly, this compromise formula has been hit upon so that they might retain membership of the Commonwealth. It is legitimate to inquire what, if anything, Commonwealth membership of this sort means.

This is a process in which New Zealand could do no more than acquiesce, but it is worth stressing that her traditional sympathetic identification with the United Kingdom and with the Empire-Commonwealth encouraged her to extend a warm welcome to new nations which opted for membership of this kind. New Zealand was glad not to have to think of India as a foreign country, and has subsequently welcomed Pakistan, Ceylon, and Ghana. On a different level her politicians at least were sorry to see that the “republic within the Commonwealth” formula did not prove elastic enough to keep South Africa within the fold.

As the second half of the twentieth century opens New Zealand is more grateful for the continuance of the Commonwealth than sure of its meaning. Internationally, regional cooperation, for instance, through ANZUS and SEATO, means more than meetings of Commonwealth heads of government; in the South Pacific the well-established habit of acting in foreign policy matters with Australia has a tradition of its own; in South-East Asian affairs the Colombo Plan and SEATO do not differentiate between members and non-members of the Commonwealth. And even that last tangible vestige of the Empire-Commonwealth, preferential trade relations, are endangered as Great Britain moves closer to the E.E.C. If New Zealand is left with nothing but the intangibles it may prove that she will be left with nothing at all. The American connection, though inescapable, is less comfortable than the British; ANZUS does not necessarily oblige the United States to act in New Zealand's defence. Probably the great majority of New Zealanders today regret the decline of British power in the Pacific which has entailed dependence upon the United States which, though friendly, is a foreign country.


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