Does some major event in history mark the end of the British Empire, or do the British still think they have an Empire?
I suppose the first large event was the granting of independance to the countries of the Indian sub-continent straight after WW2.
I don’t think we still have an empire, but there is the commonwealth, which is nice. Would like to help you, but my history is awful.
Another historical moment was the famous "winds of change " speech by Prime Minister MacMillan which paved the way for independance for the African countries.
This link gives more info :-
IMHO, that event was a series of minor tiffs called the World Wars. 
After WW2, Britain was exhausted and rather quickly let the Colonies go. Indian independence was 1947 or maybe 1949. Canadian citizenship, the first national differentiation, I believe, in the former Empire, was 1947. Before then, we Canadians, Australians, Indians, New Zealanders, Jamaicans, Rhodesians, Hongkongers, etc, were all “British subjects”.
Indian and Pakistani friends and associates of mine still moan that most of their problems today are due to Britain’s rule.
I have no clue if this is true or not.
Hong Kongers still were, up until 1997.
They still do have an empire which includes The Falklands Islands, Tristan de Cunha, Gibraltar and numerous other territories around the world. It is just a lot more compact than it used to be 
Technically the Empire came to an end in 1947, with the independence of India. George VI had been Emperor of India up to that point; thereafter he was just a King.
Of course the UK still had lots of colonies after 1947, but India had been by far the largest, wealthiest and most signficant strategically, so the independence of India was of great symbolic importance in marking the end of empire, and everybody knew it at the time. Thereafter there could be no doubt that the other colonies would also become independent in time. The kept the rest pf the show on the road for another ten years or so, but from the late 1950s colonies were granted independence at a rapid rate, and only the very smallest now remain.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that (at least) Australians are still today considered ‘subjects of QEII’.
Admittedly the Queen has very limited powers, but I saw some papers in a museum in Adelaide, to the effect of people wishing to obtain Australian citizenship had to swear allegiance to the queen, as late as in the 60’s. And from what I can find the basic Australian citizenship laws haven’t changed much since 1948.
One could argue that, as a formal, legal entity, ‘The British Empire’ was always a bit amorphous. It was really only ever used as an informal shorthand to describe Britain’s various colonial possessions whose inhabitants were considered subjects of the British Crown. British monarchs were only emperors or empresses ‘of India’.
That said, the obvious answer to the OP would be Indian independence, in that this was when the concept of ‘the Commonwealth’ as some sort of successor club to ‘the Empire’ first began to be used. The term had been used earlier, but it provided a convenient way of allowing India to retain informal links with the British Crown now that it had become a republic. The ‘king-emperor’ became a mere king.
This was also probably the point at which most people in Britain accepted that the Empire’s days were numbered. Most of the other remaining colonies gained independence in the 1960s, so, although Britain retained (and retains) some minor colonial possessions, talk of ‘the Empire’ quickly came to seem very old-fashioned. Despite what mogiaw might think, the Falklands Islands, Tristan de Cunha, Gibraltar may be colonies but they’re hardly ‘an empire’.
Yes, but only because Elizabeth possesses the title of a “Queen of Australia” parallelly to the “Queen of the UK” title. The two crowns are technically seperate, although the bearer is the same person. It doesn’t mean Australians are considered British citizens (although, AFAIK, Britain still grants suffrage to any CVommonwealth citizen residing permanently in Britain, but feel free to correct me).
As for national (instead of imperial) citizenship, a seperate Canadian citizenship was installed in 1947, but according to this site, prior to WWI already a person naturalized by, say, the Australian authorities would not possess civic rights in, say, Canada. British-born persons, however, could settle down anywhere in the Empire.
My History professor once said the British had a sly method of putting the weakest people in power (as the Brits pulled out), such as in India, for one. I can’t recall…what was the logic behind this, and why was it so sly? Wouldn’t it be an almost-instant massacre as the stronger people overpowered the weaker? Maybe it was to distract the stronger people from attacking the Brits while the Brits pull-out?
Dang! :smack: He had a good argument, if I could only recall! I took this class over 12 years ago, so please don’t grade me too poorly. (I got an “A” at the time!)
Maybe some history buffs may be able to enlighten us…
- Jinx
Thanks, Schnitte. That cite (and site!) answers my next question, which I hadn’t quite asked. I was under the impression that during the full-fledged Empire, prior to 1947, all British subjects could relocate freely between the various parts of the Empire (subject to economic restraints, of course). Evidently that was never completely so; only those born in Britain could.
Who says the Empire ever fell? It merely shrank!
[nitpick] India did not become a republic upon independence in 1947. It became a dominion, like Canada or Australia, with the British monarch still as head of state, represented by a Governor-General. The title “Emperor of India” was dropped. No new title, such as “King of India” was adopted (which again parallels the position at that time in other dominions).
The general view at that time was that a republic could not participate in the Commonwealth. Burma, which had been part of British India, became a republic in 1948 and was not a member of the Commonwealth. When Ireland declared itself a republic in the same year, it too severed its (few remaining) ties with the Commonwealth, in which it had not participated actively for many years. Of course, for political reasons it suited both the UK and Ireland to accept that a republic could not participate in the Commonwealth.
In 1950 India became a republic, and continued to participate in the Commonwealth, the first republic to do so.[/nitpick]
In a sense, therefore, the term “Empire” might have had some meaning up until 1950, since all the countries associated with the UK recognised the British monarch as head of state, even if the title “Emperor” was not used after 1947. Thereafter, when republics could and did participate in the Commonwealth, the term must have seemed increasingly anachronistic.
Query: Was the term “British Empire” used before 1876, when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India? Was it, for instance, used with respect to British colonial possessions in North America before their independence?
I suspect so. Until fairly recently, there were people in Eastern Ontario who put the letters ‘UEL’ after their names. UEL = ‘United Empire Loyalist’… the ones who lost the American Revolution.
[I just love Google!]
It was in use at least in 1849, when some British colonial statesman named Edward G. Wakefield published a book with the nice title A View of the Art of Colonization in Present Reference to the British Empire in Letters between a Statesman and a Colonist.
I would have thought our Suez disiater was the turning point. After that we no longer had Imperial delusions.