Dominion

A dominion was a self-governing country within the British Empire and then the British Commonwealth of Nations, primarily in the first half of the 20th century. The dominions in 1926 were Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa; in 1947 India and Pakistan, and in 1948 Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). In the years following the Second World War, the British Empire was refashioned into the more modern and post-colonial Commonwealth of Nations, after which the former dominions were often referred to as the Old Commonwealth. This was formalised by the London Declaration, 1949, by which time the dominions (with the exception of Newfoundland) had become independent nation states.

In 1925, the government of the United Kingdom created the Dominions Office out of the Colonial Office, although for the next five years they shared a secretary in charge. "Dominion status" was first accorded to Australia, Canada, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa at the 1926 Imperial Conference through the Balfour Declaration of 1926, recognising Great Britain and the Dominions as "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations". Their full legislative independence was subsequently confirmed in the Statute of Westminster 1931. In the 1920s and 1930s, they began to represent themselves in international bodies, in treaty making, and in foreign capitals. Vestiges of empire and colonial rule lasted in some dominions late into the 20th century.

With the transition of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, it was decided that the term Commonwealth country should formally replace dominion for official Commonwealth usage.