Imperial Commonwealth, il “grande esperimento” del 1917 e la terza fase dell’Impero britannico

The First World War triggered a process of reform for the British Empire, opening a new phase, that was the third. After a first Atlantic Empire and a second more global and focused on Asia and India, the Great War rebuilt the pivot of the imperial world system founding it on a power block formed by the “white” Dominions or, in other words, the relationship between Britain and the main self-governing colonies of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Nevertheless, as in the past, India maintained a key role due to its strategic weight of «English barracks in the Oriental seas», as Lord Salisbury remarked in 1882. In this reforming process, 1917 was a fundamental step by laying the foundations for the creation of the British Commonwealth of Nations, or, according to the expression adopted in that year, the Imperial Commonwealth of autonomous nations.