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Introduction : the Commonwealth in the twenty-first century / Saul Dubow and Richard Drayton -- The League of Nations and the 'Third British Empire', 1919-40 / David Thackeray -- Commonwealth history from below? : Caribbean national, federal and pan-African renegotiations of the empire project, c. 1880-1950 / Richard Drayton -- Commonwealth constitution-maker : the life of Yash Ghai / Coel Kirby -- 'The unbridgeable gulf" : responsible self-government and Aboriginal title in Southern Rhodesia and the Commonwealth / Edward Cavanagh -- Commonwealth communities : immigration and racial thinking in twentieth century Britain / Saima Nasar -- Between insignificance and importance : the Commonwealth headship in contemporary history / Harshan Kumarasingham -- Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian republicanism, and the Commonwealth / Sunil Purushotham -- South African Indians, monarchy and the new Commonwealth : transnational conversations and perspectives, 1946-1948 / Hilary Sapire -- 'Cuckoo in the Commonwealth Nest' : the Irish impact and the Commonwealth legacy for Ireland / Donal Lowry -- The Commonwealth and ppartheid / Thula Simpson -- Racial legacies : South African apartheid and the old Commonwealth / Harriet Aldrich -- A bridge to better relations between London and Vichy : Jan Smuts, South Africa, and Commonwealth diplomacy in the Second World War / Luc-André Brunet -- Globalising Suez : Commonwealth diplomacy and the War of Algerian Independence (1955-1957) / Mélanie Torrent -- Whose Commonwealth? Negotiating Commonwealth Day in the 1950s and 1960s / Anna Bocking-Welch -- Banking on a Commonwealth future / Sarah Stockwell.

This edited collection draws together new historical writing on the Commonwealth. It features the work of younger scholars, as well as established academics, and highlights themes such as law and sovereignty, republicanism and the monarchy, French engagement with the Commonwealth, the anti-apartheid struggle, race and immigration, memory and commemoration, and banking. The volume focusses less on the Commonwealth as an institution than on the relevance and meaning of the Commonwealth to its member countries and peoples. By adopting oblique, de-centred, approaches to Commonwealth history, unusual or overlooked connections are brought to the fore while old problems are looked at from fresh vantage points - be this turning points like the relationship between 'old and `new Commonwealth members from 1949, or the distinctive roles of major figures like Jawaharlal Nehru or Jan Smuts. The volume thereby aims to refresh interest in Commonwealth history as a field of comparative international history.