The Commonwealth is a political association of 54 member states, nearly all former territories of the British Empire. Member states have no legal obligations to one another, but are connected through their use of the English language and historical ties. The countries of the Commonwealth cover more than 29,958,050 km2, equivalent to 20 per cent of the world’s land area. Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state of 16 member states and the Commonwealth realms, while 33 other members are republics.
About Commonwealth of Nations in brief
The Commonwealth is a political association of 54 member states, nearly all former territories of the British Empire. The Commonwealth dates back to the first half of the 20th century with the decolonisation of its territories. Member states have no legal obligations to one another, but are connected through their use of the English language and historical ties. The countries of the Commonwealth cover more than 29,958,050 km2, equivalent to 20 per cent of the world’s land area. The total population is estimated to be 2,418,964,000 as of 2016, equivalent to nearly a third of the global population, making it the second largest intergovernmental organisation by population behind the United Nations. Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state of 16 member states and the Commonwealth realms, while 33 other members are republics and 5 others have different monarchs. The 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting appointed Charles, Prince of Wales to be her designated successor, although the position is not hereditary. There are 14 mainly self-governing British overseas territories that did not become Commonwealth members upon independence. Former protectorates of Iraq and Egypt are the only states that were not British colonies at the time of the war and did not join the Commonwealth. The word ‘Commonwealth’ was dropped from the title of the organisation to reflect its changing nature to reflect the changing nature of its member states. The current Commonwealth of Nations was formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949, which modernised the community and established the member states as ‘free and equal’ The term ‘Common Commonwealth’ was officially adopted to describe the community by the United Kingdom in 1949.
The term was first used in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, when the term British Commonwealth of nations was substituted for British Empire in the wording of the oath taken by members of parliament of the Irish Free State. In the Balfour Declaration at the 1926 Imperial Conference, Britain and its dominions agreed they were \”equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by common allegiance to the Crown, and freely associated as members of theBritish Commonwealth of Nation\”. The term ‘Commonwealth’ was officially coined by Jan Smuts in 1917 when he coined the term ‘the British Commonwealth’ and envisioned the ‘future constitutional relations and readjustments in essence’ at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, attended by delegates from the Dominions as well as Britain. After the Second World War, South Africa was confirmed as a sovereign state by the Status of Union Act, and the Royal Executive Functions and Seals Act of 1934. South Africa’s status as a Sovereign State was confirmed by the South African Parliament in 1934. There remain 14 mainly republics, and 14 Commonwealth realms or republics that remain the Commonwealth, and there are only the Transjordanates, Egypt, Burma and Aden that are not British protectorates.
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This page is based on the article Commonwealth of Nations published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
