ABSTRACT
The interest in maintaining the unity of the empire was a continuing one from the late eighteenth through to the mid-twentieth century. It took varying political, economic and defensive forms depending on the nature of domestic and external circumstances. ‘Imperial union’ or ‘closer union of the empire’ were umbrella phrases underscoring the goal or aim in mind but they were, and are, of little help in explaining or defining the means of maintaining or achieving union. Similarly, the term ‘imperial federation’ was loosely used to describe a bewildering variety of schemes and plans for union, most of which had little in common with federation per se. More recently, the term ‘empire federalism’ has been coined to describe the various constitutional devices designed either to preserve the unity of the empire or to at least ensure its better management. Again, the majority of those ideas had little to do with federalism. Only if one defines federalism very loosely to mean any idea that promotes cooperation, whether by federal means or not, does the term have any currency. The various schemes for including colonial MPs in the Westminster parliament and the plethora of proposals for advisory councils, conferences and congresses that surfaced were all interesting, often ingenious, usually impracticable and definitely not federal. Only the schemes establishing an empire-wide parliament, increasingly to the fore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were truly federal in nature.1
