Britain and the Commonwealth

Britain and the seven other members of the Commonwealth of Nations ¹ —Australia, Canada, Ceylon, ² India, New Zealand, Pakistan, and South Africa—all played, to a greater or lesser extent, a political and diplomatic role in the Korean War. Yet traditional accounts of the conflict have tended largely to ignore these activities, preferring to focus on those of the United States and battlefield events. As archival records have become available, historians also have begun to consider the experiences of other countries, with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) inevitably receiving the most attention. But a small, and growing, body of literature has emerged since the 1980s examining the Commonwealth members.