A 'New' Commonwealth for Britain? Negotiating Ghana's Pan African and Asian Connections at the End of Empire (1951 8)
ABSTRACT This article examines to what extent Nkrumah's Pan African ambitions and Asian connections altered the meaning of the 'new' Commonwealth for British policy makers. It discusses India's influence on British political options in the Gold Coast during the negotiations for independence and Commonwealth membership and assesses the impact of Ghana's Pan Africanism on two major facets of Commonwealth politics: Britain's ability to balance its relations with the Commonwealth and France, the other main European actor in Africa; and Britain's capacity to maintain the idea of a common heritage, which Pan African projects like the Ghana Guinea Union threatened to disrupt.