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Phrases such as “common wealth” or “common weal” were used to refer to the common good. In the 15th century, wealth meant “general well-being”. The “wealth” in “Commonwealth” does not simply mean money. Ten things you didn’t know about the Commonwealth English remains the organisation’s working language. The majority of these member states were once British colonies that continue to uphold values introduced by their former overlords, including a commitment to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. The Commonwealth of Nations comprises 53 member states, ranging from Antigua and Barbuda to Zambia, who voluntarily work towards shared goals. The Commonwealth Games of exclusion: what are authorities so afraid of? The organisation itself changed its name from the British Commonwealth to the Commonwealth of Nations. It also allowed countries with Indigenous monarchies to be admitted to the Commonwealth. The London Declaration provided for countries to remain part of the Commonwealth even if, like India, they became republics. Others think the modern Commonwealth dates from the 1949 London Declaration. The principles set out in this declaration were enacted in the Statute of Westminster of 1931. Some see it as dating from the 1926 Balfour Declaration, under which the United Kingdom and its dominions were declared “autonomous Communities within the British Empire … and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations”. It is difficult to date precisely when the modern Commonwealth came into being.
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When Lord Roseberry’s tour of Australia concluded with his triumphant speech at Adelaide’s Town Hall on 18 January 1884, he famously referred to the Australian colonies as a “nation” and the British Empire as a “Commonwealth of Nations”. Talk of a Commonwealth began almost half a century before the Commonwealth superseded Britain’s empire. The Commonwealth Games are an opportunity to face up to the history of colonialism Some of her colonies were becoming increasingly independent. Yet by the closing decades of the 19th century, Britain’s empire was changing. For 350 years, dating from when the East India Company was founded in 1600 until after the end of the second world war, Britain’s global reach was extensive. Britain’s territorial vastness was neatly summed up in the Victorian era by the observation that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”.
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