Commonwealthmen and republicans: Dr. H.V. Evatt, the monarchy and India

H.V. Evatt's foreign policy has attracted considerable historical attention , but his response as Australian External Affairs Minister to Commonwealth constitutional issues remains neglected. Evatt sought to retain India in th e Commonwealth in 1948-49, but he insisted chat India ought: to recognise t he king's prerogatives in its constitutional arrangements. He had developed his defence of the monarchy and its place in the empire in his writings of the inter-war years, and sought to apply these ideas in his Commonwealth d iplomacy of the late 1940s. Evatt's failure to have these ideas accepted re sulted from his attempt to impose an ideal of the relationship between the monarchy and the Commonwealth, derived from his understanding of the evolut ion of constitutional relations between the United Kingdom and the old domi nions, to the very different context of Asian postwar decolonisation.