Empire's New Clothes
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In the wake of Brexit, the Commonwealth has been identified as an important body for future British trade and diplomacy, but few know what it actually does. How is it organised and what has held it together for so long? How important is the monarch’s role as Head of the Commonwealth? Most importantly, why has it had such a troubled recent past, and is it realistic to imagine that its fortunes might be reversed?
In The Empire’s New Clothes, Murphy strips away the gilded self-image of the Commonwealth to reveal an irrelevant institution afflicted by imperial amnesia. He offers a personal perspective on this complex and poorly understood institution, and asks if it can ever escape from the shadow of the British Empire to become an organisation based on shared values, rather than a shared history.
Philip Murphy is Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Professor of British and Commonwealth History at the University of London. He has published extensively on the history of British decolonisation and, recently, on the Commonwealth-wide role of the British monarchy. Since 2007, he has been co-editor of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.