Empires, as we know, do not collapse overnight. They linger within institutions, cultures and mentalités long after the formal end of imperial administration, whether as trauma, nostalgia or aspiration. In the Australian case, this lingering imperial aftermath can be seen in the priority accorded to the British connection even after the Second World War by Australian governments, with the overwhelming support of the Australian population. Despite the lessons that might have been drawn from

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... in's failure in the Pacific war, its resistance to Australia's war-time demands, and the military-industrial successes of the United States, reactivating the imperial connection was a primary aim of both major parties. More broadly, British sentiment appears to have suffered little damage during the war; if anything, it was strengthened. The continuing-or renewed-significance of Britain and Britishness to Australia at this time can be seen even in the launch of Australia's mass immigration program in 1946-47. This policy would eventually change Australia into a multi-ethnic society, but that was not the aim; quite the reverse. The purpose of encouraging immigration was to preserve and build a stronger white British Australia, a goal based in turn on the assumption of an Empire-wide family of British peoples (more precisely it was narrower than the Empire, extending initially not much further than the white settler societies). Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell assured Australians that all migrants would be "Caucasian" and nine out of every ten would be British. 1) The norms of White Australia-and assimilation into a "British" society for the increasing numbers of non-British migrants-would remain largely intact for the next thirty years. Australians in 1960 could still with fair accuracy be described, in the phrase historian W. K. Hancock had used in 1930, as "independent Australian Britons" (the phrase itself goes back to the turn of the century). 2) In one sense this is not surprising as the concept of an Empire-wide British community was not so much ancient history as a relatively recent product of late-Victorian imperial ideology. The "new imperialism" of the late-nineteenth century was at its peak during the very decades in which Australian federation was being debated and the future nation's constitutional status decided. 3) And it remained strong,