Jigger

6. What makes the British Commonwealth hang together? Is the British commonwealth of native just another name for the British Empire? According to http://www.historians.org the important matter, however, is not why we ask what makes the Commonwealth hold together but what the answer is. To reach it we must start off with another question: What is it that holds together? The map opposite page 1 will help us answer. Geographically the British Commonwealth is a rather large affair, for it includes the whole of one continent (Australia), half of North America, almost a third of Africa, an eighth of Asia, one-thirtieth of Europe, little bits of South and Central America, and islands in nearly every sea. It covers 13,000,000 square miles, or a quarter of the world’s land surface. And it houses about 550,000,000 people, or a quarter of the human race. Canada’s 3,700,000 square miles and Australia’s 3,000,000 account for half the area, but far less than 4 percent of the population. India contributes one-eighth of the size but holds 400,000,000 people, or more than 70 percent of the total. The native inhabitants of the other areas number 75,000,000. The whole white population of the Commonwealth amounts to about 75,000,000 or 14 percent.
When we turn from the quantity of the Commonwealth to its political character, here are some recent definitions. A Canadian scholar says it is “a free and voluntary partnership or association of nations.” An Australian expert describes it as “an association or organization for common action of a group of communities historically linked by settlement or conquest with Britain.” To Field Marshal Smuts, the South African soldier and statesman, it is “a group of sovereign states working together, living together in peace and war under a system that has stood the greatest strain to which any nation can be subjected.” An American observer says, “It is on the whole the most effective league of nations that the world has ever seen.” But a