Queen Elizabeth II has finally passed away. Ninety-six years is a good run for any individual. And as with so many of us, she was the sole British monarch of my lifetime up to this point.
Our fascination with the British monarchy has had a life of its own; a perennial feature of American pop culture for decades. In my memory, it didn’t become a thing until the marriage of Charles and Diana. It wasn’t so much him—then and now his bland persona made him easy to ignore. It was the sudden glamour bestowed upon this mild-mannered nursery school teacher thrust suddenly into the limelight which caught the popular imagination. Her divorce from her Prince, her sudden and tragic death, and the lives of her sons have kept the royals in the forefront of our collective consciousness.
But it is not my intention to dissect the royal family as cultural phenomenon. The monarchy, for all its recently acquired media friendliness, possesses a fraught legacy. While hardly at the fore of the media coverage, there has been a steady commentary in online media particularly concerning the larger implications of British imperialism.
Much has been written of the rapid decline of the British Empire since the Second World War. Ensuring the survival of the metropole took precedence over preserving the overseas colonies, and rapid decolonization was a collateral effect once the guns fell silent in Europe. Not that this was entirely a smooth process; one need only reference the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau, and the Aden Emergency to recognize that Britain sought to maintain its possessions across the globe even as the anticolonial tide washed upon them.
The vestiges of the Empire survive in the form of the Commonwealth, which is an institution in flux. For much of its history, the Commonwealth served as a means for Britain to exert soft power over its former subjects. However, one can also make the argument that principled actions such as the opposition to UDI in Rhodesia and apartheid in South Africa were as much the product of its recently independent members exerting influence over British policy in the court of public opinion.
The nature of the Commonwealth is changing, with countries without a history of British colonialism such as Mozambique and Rwanda coming into the fold. Similarly, the stance of members toward the monarchy is changing. Barbados was the latest to break with the Crown and became a republic last year.
A discussion of the Empire’s decline and fall too often sidestep its origins. England, and later Britain was arguably the originator of the Western settler state. Medieval and early modern Ireland was the prototype. Even though Ireland was the first Commonwealth country to withdraw, the Anglicization of its culture is permanent. (Gaelic is an official language, but just about everyone speaks English exclusively. Although there are identifiable cultural differences, the country, at least in the cities, is rather like Britain albeit with a different accent.)
Consider the rest of the Anglosphere. Indigenous peoples were displaced and subjected to genocide in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. English-speaking Europeans form a substantial demographic in South Africa almost thirty years after majority rule. In other places, they are a minority as they had been during the colonial era. The only former colony to have achieved a near-purge of European settlers has been Zimbabwe, where one-fifth of one percent of the population is white.
So, the Queen’s passing does mark the end of an era. It will probably also feed the fascination surrounding the royal-watching pastime. Whether the new king and the surviving royals can maintain the future relevance of the monarchy is a separate question. Britain’s future relevance post-Brexit is one as well.
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2022 The Unassuming Scholar
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