Imperial Conference

This article is about meetings in the British Empire. For the Japanese imperial meetings, see Gozen Kaigi.

Imperial Conferences (Colonial Conferences before 1907) were periodic gatherings of government leaders from the self-governing colonies and dominions of the British Empire between 1887 and 1937, before the establishment of regular Meetings of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in 1944. They were held in 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1921, 1923, 1926, 1930, 1932 and 1937.

King George V (front, centre) with his prime ministers in 1926. Standing (left to right): Walter Stanley Monroe (Newfoundland), Gordon Coates (New Zealand), Stanley Bruce (Australia), J. B. M. Hertzog (Union of South Africa), W. T. Cosgrave (Irish Free State). Seated: Stanley Baldwin (United Kingdom), King George V, William Lyon Mackenzie King (Canada).

All the conferences were held in London, the seat of the Empire, except for the 1894 and 1932 conferences which were held in Ottawa, the capital of the senior Dominion of the Crown. The 1907 conference changed the name of the meetings to Imperial Conferences and agreed that the meetings should henceforth be regular rather than taking place while overseas statesmen were visiting London for royal occasions (e.g. jubilees and coronations).

List of conferences

Year	Date	Host	Location	Retreat	Chairman
1887	4 April – 6 May	United Kingdom	London	Senate House, Bloomsbury	Lord Salisbury
1894	28 June – 9 July	Canada	Ottawa	Centre Block	Mackenzie Bowell
1897	24 June – 8 July	United Kingdom	London	Colonial Office, Whitehall	Joseph Chamberlain
1902	30 June – 11 August				Joseph Chamberlain
1907	15 April – 14 May				Henry Campbell-Bannerman
1911	23 May – 20 June				H. H. Asquith
1917	21 March – 27 April				David Lloyd George
1918	12 June – 26 July				David Lloyd George
1921	20 June – 5 August				David Lloyd George
1923	1 October – 8 November				Stanley Baldwin
1926	19 October – 22 November				Stanley Baldwin
1930	1 October – 14 November				Ramsay MacDonald
1932	21 July – 18 August	Canada	Ottawa	House of Commons Chamber, Parliament Hill	R. B. Bennett
1937	14 May – 24 June	United Kingdom	London		Stanley Baldwin (until 28 May) Neville Chamberlain (from 28 May)

Notable meetings

Originally instituted to emphasise imperial unity, as time went on, the conferences became a key forum for dominion governments to assert the desire for removing the remaining vestiges of their colonial status. The conference of 1926 agreed to the Balfour Declaration, which acknowledged that the dominions would henceforth rank as equals to the United Kingdom, as members of the 'British Commonwealth of Nations'.

The conference of 1930 decided to abolish the legislative supremacy of the British Parliament as it was expressed through the Colonial Laws Validity Act and other Imperial Acts. The statesmen recommended that a declaratory enactment of Parliament, which became the Statute of Westminster 1931, be passed with the consent of the dominions, but some dominions did not ratify the statute until some years afterwards. The 1930 conference was notable, too, for the attendance of Southern Rhodesia, despite it being a self-governing colony, not a dominion.

Towards Commonwealth meetings

As World War II drew to a close, Imperial Conferences were replaced by Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conferences, with 17 such meetings occurring from 1944 until 1969, all but one of the meetings occurred in London. The gatherings were renamed Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) in 1971 and were henceforth held every two years with hosting duties rotating around the Commonwealth.

See also

• British Empire Economic Conference (1932)
• Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
• First Colonial Conference
• Historiography of the British Empire
• Imperial War Cabinet

Further reading

• Keith, A.B. The Government of the British Empire (1935).
• Kendle, J.E. (1967). The Colonial and Imperial Conferences, 1887-1911: A Study in Imperial Organization. Imperial Studies. Vol. XXVIII. London: Longmans for the Royal Commonwealth Society. ASIN B0000CO3QA. doi:10.1086/ahr/74.3.999.
• Olson, James S., ed. Historical Dictionary of European Imperialism (1991) pp 292–300; Covers 1907, 1911, 1921, 1923, 1926 and 1932
• Palmer, G.E.H. Constitution and Cooperation in the British Commonwealth (1934)
• Colonial Conference, 1887", London: HM Stationery, 1887
• Colonial Conference, Minutes, 1907, London: HM Stationery, 1907
• Imperial Conference, 1923, London: HM Stationery, 1923
• Imperial Conference, 1926, London: HM Stationery, 1926