Imperial Conference
Imperial Conferences (Colonial Conferences before 1907) were periodic gatherings of government leaders from the self-governing colonies and dominions of the
.All the conferences were held in London, the seat of the Empire, except for the 1894 and 1932 conferences which were held in Ottawa, the capital of the senior Dominion of the Crown. The 1907 conference changed the name of the meetings to Imperial Conferences and agreed that the meetings should henceforth be regular rather than taking place while overseas statesmen were visiting London for royal occasions (e.g. jubilees and coronations).
List of conferences
Year | Date | Host | Location | Retreat | Chairman |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1887
|
4 April – 6 May | United Kingdom | London | Senate House, Bloomsbury | Lord Salisbury |
1894 | 28 June – 9 July | Canada | Ottawa | Centre Block | Mackenzie Bowell |
1897 | 24 June – 8 July | United Kingdom | London | Colonial Office, Whitehall | Joseph Chamberlain |
1902 | 30 June – 11 August
|
Joseph Chamberlain | |||
1907 | 15 April – 14 May
|
Henry Campbell-Bannerman | |||
1911 | 23 May – 20 June
|
H. H. Asquith | |||
1917 | 21 March – 27 April
|
David Lloyd George | |||
1918 | 12 June – 26 July
|
David Lloyd George | |||
1921 | 20 June – 5 August
|
David Lloyd George | |||
1923 | 1 October – 8 November
|
Stanley Baldwin | |||
1926 | 19 October – 22 November
|
Stanley Baldwin | |||
1930 | 1 October – 14 November
|
Ramsay MacDonald | |||
1932 | 21 July – 18 August | Canada | Ottawa | House of Commons Chamber, Parliament Hill | R. B. Bennett |
1937 | 14 May – 24 June | United Kingdom | London | Stanley Baldwin (until 28 May) Neville Chamberlain (from 28 May) |
Notable meetings
Originally instituted to emphasise imperial unity, as time went on, the conferences became a key forum for dominion governments to assert the desire for removing the remaining vestiges of their colonial status.
The conference of 1930 decided to abolish the legislative supremacy of the
Towards Commonwealth meetings
As World War II drew to a close, Imperial Conferences were replaced by Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conferences, with 17 such meetings occurring from 1944 until 1969, all but one of the meetings occurred in London. The gatherings were renamed Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) in 1971 and were henceforth held every two years with hosting duties rotating around the Commonwealth.
See also
- British Empire Economic Conference (1932)
- Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
- First Colonial Conference
- Historiography of the British Empire
- Imperial War Cabinet
Footnotes
Further reading
- Keith, A.B. The Government of the British Empire (1935).
- Olson, James S., ed. Historical Dictionary of European Imperialism (1991) pp 292–300; Covers 1907, 1911, 1921, 1923, 1926 and 1932
- Palmer, G.E.H. Constitution and Cooperation in the British Commonwealth (1934)
- Colonial Conference, 1887", London: HM Stationary, 1887
- Colonial Conference, Minutes, 1907, London: HM Stationary, 1907
- Imperial Conference, 1923, London: HM Stationary, 1923
- Imperial Conference, 1926, London: HM Stationary, 1926