On 13 March 2023, King Charles delivered his first Commonwealth Day message as monarch from the great pulpit at Westminster Abbey. Departing from the tradition of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, who typically pre-recorded her annual messages, Charles took the opportunity to deliver his address live and in person. Appealing directly to billions of Commonwealth citizens spread across 56 member countries, he declared that the voluntary association’s “near boundless potential as a force for good in the world demands our highest ambition; its sheer scale challenges us to unite and be bold”.
“This week marks the 10th anniversary of the charter of the Commonwealth, which gives expression to our defining values: peace and justice; tolerance, respect and solidarity; care for our environment and for the most vulnerable among us,” Charles continued. “These are not simply ideals. In each lies an imperative to act, and to make a practical difference in the lives of the 2.6 billion people who call the Commonwealth home.”
But in an era when Britain’s role on the global stage and the future of the Commonwealth itself remain uncertain, improving the lives of more than a third of the world’s population poses an enormous, perhaps insurmountable, challenge. How can 74-year-old King Charles, the oldest monarch to be crowned in British history, fulfil the ambitious, forward-looking promises of his Commonwealth Day message in the time he has left?
Most Britons are familiar with the Commonwealth if not particularly well-versed in its history. The Commonwealth arose from the dying flames of the British empire and has long been closely associated with Queen Elizabeth, who served as its head and most passionate champion for all of her 70-year reign. From the outset, she envisioned the Commonwealth as a powerful vehicle for forging new diplomatic relations with, and exerting soft influence over, Britain’s former colonies as they won their independence in the years after the second world war.
“[I]n our time we may say that the British empire has saved the world first,” Elizabeth remarked in her most well-known speech delivered from Cape Town on her 21st birthday, “and has now to save itself after the battle is won.”
That newly independent states would seek to maintain close ties with Britain and its monarch as willing members of “our great imperial family” served as a point of immense pride for the Queen. While postwar decolonisation may have signalled the end of Britain’s global dominance and a contraction of British power and grandeur, the rise of the Commonwealth confirmed the lasting values and virtues of Britishness. “The Commonwealth,” as historian Caroline Elkins observed in Legacy of Violence, “would be the triumphant coda to the greatest empire in world history.”
During the second half of the 20th century, Elizabeth could look to the growth of the Commonwealth of Nations, with herself as its centre, as evidence of the continued preeminence of British culture, institutions, and laws around the world. Focusing on the Commonwealth enabled Britain and its queen to draw a veil over past atrocities committed in the name of empire, certain of, as Priyamvada Gopal put it in Insurgent Empire, “the cherished mythology of an empire that ruled in order to free”.
In 1977, in an address delivered at the Guildhall on the occasion of her silver jubilee, Queen Elizabeth emphasised the historic nature of the Commonwealth and the myriad benefits member states had accrued through their their longstanding relations with Britain. “During these last 25 years, I have travelled widely throughout the Commonwealth as its head,” she said. “And during those years I have seen, from a unique position of advantage, the last great phase of the transformation of the empire into Commonwealth and the transformation of the Crown from an emblem of dominion into a symbol of free and voluntary association. In all history this has no precedent.”
Her assessment, however, obscured the brutal history and residue of British imperialism across the globe. It concealed the extent to which violent, extractive and exploitative colonial practices not only shaped the emergence and struggles of the developing world but continue to affect the daily lives and prospects of billions of people today. Despite arguments that developing economies must move on, unlock their potential, and stop harping on historic wrongs, the fate of Britain’s former colonial possessions remain inextricably bound up with the past. In the 21st century, during an era of mounting global inequalities, casting light on the enduring shadows of empire is the only way to ensure existing inequities are not amplified and perpetuated.
We are all subject to the movement of time but failing to look back and reflect has consequences for the present as well as future. “But to move only forward in time, to lose the fullness of time, the way the past lives in the present and shapes the future,” Priya Satia observed in Time’s Monster, “is itself an inhuman and impossible expectation, given how intimately such societies have been shaped by the colonial past. – including the historical imagination envisioning progress towards some developmental end”
By choosing for the most part not to confront the ruthlessness that underpinned British colonisation, Queen Elizabeth deferred the day of reckoning to an unspecified future date. This postponed reckoning has now fallen to her eldest son and heir, Charles. Indeed, it was Elizabeth who convinced Commonwealth leaders to announce in 2018 that Charles, Britain’s next monarch, would succeed her as head, although the position is not hereditary. She probably anticipated that Charles would conform to and confirm her vision of the Commonwealth, helping member states to navigate today’s complex, rapidly changing world and maintain connections with the institution of the monarchy.
Charles has promised boldness. But in areas where he can make a real difference, such as the pressing issue of slavery reparations, he has thus far exhibited caution. In speeches delivered in Ghana in 2018, Barbados in 2021, and Rwanda in 2022, Charles expressed regret and sorrow over colonial slavery but did not apologise or reach out to affected communities to discuss reparatory justice. Now that he is both king of 15 Commonwealth realms and the head of the Commonwealth, Charles has an opportunity to demonstrate leadership on this crucial issue and leave behind his own legacy instead of his mother’s. Delaying action on Britain’s colonial past and reparations is the opposite of ambitious – it’s consigning the most difficult work to the next generation. A generation that is already facing unprecedented challenges related to climate change.
Advocating on behalf of member states that are the most marginalised and vulnerable is a worthy goal and one Charles appears keen to pursue. From floods and cyclones to droughts and heatwaves, all the members have seen the impacts of climate change. Smaller island nations are particularly threatened by global warming and rising sea levels. They need more than advocacy; they require wealthy nations to become partners in creating more sustainable economies and addressing the structural underdevelopment that stems from colonialism and slavery.
Charles has waited all his life to follow in his mother’s footsteps and assume her roles. Although the time remaining to him as monarch and head of the Commonwealth is limited, it is nonetheless sufficient for him to improve people’s lives. Now that he has taken the coronation oath, all eyes will be on him to see if he is in fact moved to act and leave his mark on history.
Brooke Newman is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the upcoming book, The Queen’s Silence
