Well, I mean... yes. But not in the way you probably think.

The Commonwealth didn't exist until 1931 when the Imperial (UK) Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster and gave the Parliaments of Canada, South Africa, and the Irish Free State (Ireland) equality with the UK's Parliament. This law also gave the Parliaments of Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland (now part of Canada) the power to adopt the Statute of Westminster at a time of their own choosing. Neither Australia nor NZ adopted this until well into World War Two.

In 1914, the British Empire spanned much of the globe and it was all controlled from London. Australia didn't even have its own embassies abroad at this time, and the very name of the army raised to fight in the first world war, the Australian Imperial Force, was specifically chosen to highlight its dual loyalties to Australia and the Empire.

At this time, we thought of ourselves as British first, Victorian/Queenslanders/Tasmanian/etc second, and as Australians not so much. You can see this later in the war, when units were consolidated across state lines and soldiers were. not. happy.

But I'm getting distracted. Even though the countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and many lesser colonies existed as political units that we would recognise today, they weren't really full countries yet, more like useful collections of colonies under the British Empire.

And when Britain went to war, so too did the Empire.

Greetings! This is certainly an interesting question and one which reveals quite a fair bit about the structure of the various dominion-states which were part of the larger British Empire on the eve of the First World War. These included Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and Newfoundland. As u/ubersejanus notes in their response, the “Commonwealth” as we know it today did not properly exist until about the Statue of Westminster (1931), and even then there were various limitations to the newly-gained “dominion” status of the former white-settler colonies. This response, whilst tacking onto the previous comments, will also delve a tad bit into the process by which the various to-be dominion nations decided to commit to the war effort. Let’s begin.

Sidenote: for more on the rights of the dominions within the larger imperial structure, see this previous writeup of mine.

War and the Empire

“The five self-governing states of the Empire had no choice about entering the conflict. When their head of state, King George V, declared war on the advice of his British ministers, they were in the fight whether they liked it or not.”

- Imperial historian John Darwin on the decision for war (or lack thereof) by the British dominions

The observation echoed by Darwin above is completely accurate and reveals a fair bit about the rights of the white-settler colonies at the turn of the 20th century. Within the framework of these to-be dominion states, their governments (based on the Westminster system) were able to carry out laws and enact domestic policies without strict control from the “mother-country”, so to speak. However, when it came to foreign policy, these colonies were entirely subservient to Whitehall and the United Kingdom. Whatever London deemed appropriate for its Empire, the colonies could do little but acquiesce. As such, when the British cabinet under H.H Asquith made the decision to go to war against Germany in August of 1914, it was equivalent to the entire empire declaring war on Germany.

Now, in theory, the dominions were not under any obligation to substantially aid the UK in its war effort. They could merely provide the funds and materiel, or even “cheer from the sidelines”, as John Darwin puts it. In practice however, their contributions were astonishing. With regards to Australia, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher remarked boldly that:

“[Australia will] stand beside our own to help and defend Britain to the last man and the last shilling”

This sentiment was shared in Canada and New Zealand, and their words were more than matched by their actions. By the war’s end, Canada and Australia had sent 13% of their male populations to fight in the trenches and battlefields; New Zealand’s figure was over 19%. Of that number, many were wounded or killed in action: almost 50% of the Canadians, 59% of the New Zealanders, and 65% of the Australians (roughly 60,000, 16,000, and 59,000 respectively).

In the first years of the war, the dominion ministers were content to leave the bulk of the conflict’s conduct to their superiors in London. This was mainly due to the fact that, for all the dominions, war created a demand for goods that they could export back to the mother country and profit from greatly. Further, for Australia and New Zealand, local security fears over neighbouring German colonies (German New Guinea and Samoa to name two) meant that the war would give them the opportunity to seize more territory.

However, as the Great War dragged on and as the casualties mounted. The dominions began to clamour for greater involvement in the imperial war effort. They viewed the conflict as one waged by the empire, not just the United Kingdom. It is to this critical stage of dominion-shaping that we turn to next.

”Waging the Britannic War?” - The Dominions in the Late-War Stages

“We deem ourselves entitled to fuller information and consultation respecting general policy in war operations.”

Canadian Premier Robert Borden on the state of dominion involvement in the war effort, 1915.

By 1916, the dominions had grown bothered by London’s treatment of them vis-a-vis the war effort. Despite mounting casualty lists and the increasing commitment of manpower to the various theatres, Britain refused to budge on the question of allowing the dominions a greater say in how those men and materiel were to be utilised. To them, the loyalty of the dominions ought to be rewarded with the “unequivocal abolition of their ‘colonial’ status in matters of external policy” (that is, they were to gain independence from London in all foreign affairs).

An opportunity came with the government shake-up in 1916, as Asquith’s government was replaced by Llyod George’s. Within his five-person war cabinet was Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, who believed that the dominions deserved a greater role in planning the war effort (a sentiment also shared, if only begrudgingly, by the rest of the new cabinet). Thus it was that in December 1916 the dominions were invited to send representatives to to an Imperial War Conference, which ran from March to May 1917.

The Conference itself gave Borden and his Australian counterpart W.M. Hughes some of what they wanted. War aims were discussed and, perhaps most importantly, London agreed to postwar readjustments on relations with the dominion governments to respect their status as:

“autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, [with arrangements for] continuous consultation and an adequate voice in foreign policy and...foreign relations.”

The Imperial War Conference convened again in 1918, against the backdrop of a crisis: the Germans had almost pushed the British to the breaking point in their Kaiserschlacht offensive that Spring, and Italy appeared on the verge of pulling out. It was during this conference that Llyod George made arrangements to allow his dominion counterparts a greater say in the planning of military operations. Unsurprisingly however, all this cooperation nearly fell apart when the war abruptly ended, with only a last-minute protest by the dominion ministers securing them a place at what would be the Paris Peace Conference.

In the tumultuous postwar years, the question of dominion autonomy was brought up again in succeeding Imperial Conferences, and it was at the 1930 iteration of this event that the dominions finally achieved their goal of securing a status equal to that of their former “overlord” (to use a slightly misleading but fittingly dramatic term). Article 3 of the resulting Statute of Westminster made the following provision that had escaped the agendas of the Imperial War Cabinet from 1917-1918:

"3.. It is hereby declared and enacted that the Parliament of a Dominion has full power to make laws having extra-territorial operation.

4. No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof."

Hope this response helps, and feel free to ask any follow-ups as you see fit.

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