History of Global Arms Transfer, 10 (2020), pp. 63-82

Economic Governance in the EmpireCommonwealth in Theory and in Practice,c. 1887-1975†
ANDREW DILLEY*

Summary
After a long spell of neglect, historians in the last twenty years have started again
to take an interest in the economics of the ‘British World’: an entity centred on
Britain and the dominions. Their approach emphasises shared culture andnetworks. By contrast this article reasserts the importance of institutions ofgovernance in shaping economic transactions and hence the importance ofpolitical (not cultural) economy. In order to re-emphasise the connected
importance of co-ordination between states within the Empire, it prefers the term
Empire-Commonwealth to British world, a term more closely grounded incontemporary language. It argues that the Empire-Commonwealth possessed
complex, patchy, but discernible practices of economic governance which thepaper delineates and argues were shaped by the overriding concern to maximise
the autonomy of self-governing members (Britain and the dominions). These
practices let to cooperation over preferential trading arrangements, currency,
taxation, migration and investment, law and regulation, and transport andcommunications. After 1945 the international framework which sustained thesepractices transformed, while the internal dynamics of the post-imperial
Commonwealth made significant cooperation on matters other than aid anddevelopment in the global south unlikely. The possibility of broad-ranging
governance receded even as intra-Commonwealth trade and investment declined.

I Introduction
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States used its newfound hegemonic
power to remake the global order. It became the principal architect of a set of binding
international political and economic institutions: the United Nations, the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It also supported complementary regional
supranational groupings ones such as the North Atlantic Treaty Association, and promoted* Author’s Affiliation: University of Aberdeen.
† Previous versions of this article were presented at the ‘Rethinking the Commonwealth’ symposium held at

the Centre for Global Security and Governance at the University of Aberdeen in May 2017, and the ‘British
World Conference’ held at the Centre for Global Arms Transfer, Meiji University, November 2019. I am gratefulto those audiences for helpful feedback. The underlying research was supported by an AHRC Early Career
Fellowship (AH/M00662X/1).

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Free Trade Areas, not least the European Economic Community.1 This reordering cut acrossolder forms of association. The British Empire and Commonwealth’s system of imperial
preference proved an early target for American economic policy makers wedded, like theirforebears, to the ‘open door’.2 British defences of the status quo denied the legitimacy ofAmerican intervention.3 For instance, in October 1945, the report of a conference hosted by
the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire stated that although the‘British Commonwealth of Nations’ was ‘divided by the sea’ and composed of ‘States
which are themselves each and severally sovereign’, this, however, did not ‘deprive themof the right to lower the inter-State tariff walls which divide them’ since ‘the right to this isclaimed by every political entity’.4 In 1948 the same body compared ‘The trading systemof the widespread British Commonwealth and Colonial Empire … to that of the great
domestic market of the United States’.5
Thus, defenders of imperial preference asserted a political and economic unity imparted
by practices of association that had grown between largely autonomous states embedded
within, but distinguished from, the broader British empire.6 They deployed the rhetorical
fruits of a half century long project to imagine and maintain a political entity which wassimultaneously united and divided – both one and yet also composed of separate andincreasingly sovereign parts. The term British Commonwealth of Nations was officiallyadopted in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and centred on the self-governing parts of the
Empire. The famous statement in 1926 by Lord Balfour explained that British
Commonwealth of Nations was composed of ‘autonomous communities within the British
Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of theirdomestic or external affairs’. 7 These interwar developments crystallised a pattern andtrajectory already visible in political thought and practice from the late nineteenth century;a Commonwealth project forming within broader project of empire.8
This article charts the economic dimensions of this Empire-Commonwealth project. The
term Empire-Commonwealth is used here to encompass particularly but not exclusively the
Anglo-Dominion core of the British Commonwealth of Nations from the 1880s to the
1940s. It is deployed first to reflect slippery contemporary terminology and spatial
imagination. The British Commonwealth of Nations was not entirely distinguished fromthe colonial empire in shifting contemporary political vocabulary. India was for example
officially part of the British Commonwealth of Nations – although its status was ill defined.
Down to 1939 the term empire was more frequently used than Commonwealth even for
institutions largely focused on the autonomous core of the Commonwealth. Contemporaries
also still conceived of the British Commonwealth of Nations as possessing a connection torest of the colonial empire.9 Second, Empire-Commonwealth differentiates from the postcolonial Commonwealth of Nations which emerged from the period of decolonization. In
1 Borgwardt, New Deal for the World; Anderson, The New Old World. On the US and European integration, seealso Monnet and Mayne, Memoirs.
2 McKenzie, Redefining the Bonds of Commonwealth; Tooze, The Deluge, p. 16.
3 Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy.
4 London Metropolitan Archives (LMA hereafter), CLC/B/082/MS18287: Congress Proceedings, 1945, p. 9
(Congress Proceedings hereafter). All LMA references are from these papers unless otherwise stated.
5 Congress Proceedings, 1948, p. 36.
6 Jennings, The British Commonwealth of Nations.
7 E. 129, Imperial Conference, 1926, Inter-Imperial Relations Committee, p. 1
8 Hall, British Commonwealth; Hall, Commonwealth. The term project here adapts Darwin, Empire Project.
For late-nineteenth and early twentieth century political thought, see Bell, Idea of Greater Britain; Baji, ‘Zionist
Internationalism?’; Baji, ‘British Commonwealth’.
9 Behm, Imperial History, pp. 185-220; McIntyre, Britannic Vision, p. 87.

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1945 was possible to imagine the Empire-Commonwealth as an economic and politicalentity. This was not possible of its post-colonial successor by the 1970s.10 Although thepost-colonial Commonwealth encompasses much the same membership as the EmpireCommonwealth, it has a very different and more limited praxis of intergovernmental
cooperation.

II Historiography and Argument
That the Empire-Commonwealth possessed, and was seen to possess, possibilities of
economic governance has been underemphasised in the recent historiography on empire. It
was not always so. During the first half of the twentieth century, the great debate on
imperial preference placed economics and governance at the heart of emerging ideas about
the Commonwealth. Keith Hancock’s Surveys of Commonwealth Affairs devoted volumes
to the Commonwealth’s ‘Problems of Nationality’ and ‘Problems of Economic Policy’ in1937 and 1942.11 Economics featured heavily in later volumes in the series by Nicholas
Mansergh and J. D. B. Miller.12 For this older literature the Commonwealth was an entity
which had affairs. However, in the late-twentieth century imperial history and theCommonwealth parted company. In 1953 Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher’s‘Imperialism of Free Trade’ and its underlying concept of informal empire ungirded thestudy of empire from close attention to political institutions.13 Their school of the literaturereached its zenith in P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins’ two volume study of British imperialism.
The index for the second edition had a one-line entry for the ‘Commonwealth’, merely
cross-referring the reader to the ‘post-war period’.14
The core of the Empire-Commonwealth, the self-governing settler dominions attracted
more attention in Cain and Hopkins’ work than Robinson and Gallagher’s and took centre
stage in the new literature on the British World that emerged from the early twenty-first
century. Yet that literature was constructed on slippery conceptual foundations. While defacto many authors – including Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich in their opening
manifesto – used the term Commonwealth, this usage did not feed the conceptualisation of
the British world.15 The British world remained disconnected from the continuing trickle ofpublications on the Commonwealth.16
This neglect has characterised the application of the British World concept to economics.
James Belich, writing on the conceptually distinct Anglo-world, distinguished a distinct
Anglo-dominion economic sphere but had little to say on politics even though his ‘twofold’ angloworld could only be distinguished by political and constitutional means.17
Similar problems can be seen in Gary Magee and Andrew Thompson’s Empire andGlobalisation.18 Magee and Thompson’s concept of ‘cultural economy’ down played therole of the state - of political economy – and placed instead at the heart of a British world
10 Lloyd, ‘Britain and the Transformation’.
11 Hancock, Problems of Economic Policy; Hancock, Problems of Nationality.
12 Mansergh, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs; Miller, Survey of Commonwealth Affairs.
13 Gallagher and Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’.
14 Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, p. 713. For a recent assessment, see Dilley,‘Jientorumanshihonshugiron Ga Iwazunisumase Mizunisumaseteirukoto’.
15 Bright and Dilley, ‘After the British World’.
16 A distinct revival of interest in the political thought that underpinned the Commonwealth has begun. See for
instance, Bell, Idea of Greater Britain; Baji, ‘Zionist Internationalism?’.
17 Belich, Replenishing the Earth.
18 Ibid.; Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation.

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economy the operation of ‘co-ethnic networks’.19 The approach usefully highlighted theway culture and identity can shape economics. But they two found it hard to delineate theirsubject sharply treating the US as an ambiguous case both inside and outside of the ‘British
world’ without explaining how or why that could be the case.20 Yet, as the example of the
defence of imperial preference in the late 1940s showed, for US and EmpireCommonwealth policy makers, political economy sharply separated the ‘Angloworld’.
Magee and Thompson focused on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. DavidThackeray has recently taken the concept of cultural economy forward into the twentiethcentury, a period in which the role of states, regional, and international bodies in regulating
the global economy expanded enormously. Thackeray has offered a rich study which seeks
to show the construction of a ‘British World of Trade’ – a world he confines to the EmpireCommonwealth which features in his sub-title. His emphasis is on the forging and thendisintegration of economic networks which shaped patterns of trade. He gives usefulattention both to the expulsion of non-whites from these networks, and to their interaction
with the international level. Thackeray is far more conscious of and gives far moreemphasis to the role of politics and the state: the core of his book focuses on official andquasi-official bodies such as the Imperial Economic Council, or business associations suchas chambers of commerce. He also often acknowledges that many of the networks (as heterms them – I would prefer institutions) he focuses on were framed by politics. Indeed, his
study’s chronology is bounded by the period of late-Victorian imperial federation and final
Britain’s entry into the EEC: in other words, by political economy. 21 Yet he retains apreference for the British world as a framework (using Empire-Commonwealth as asynonym) and rejecting other possible terms.22 Hence Thackeray also retains the ‘network’as his driving concept, and charts trade associations and networks skilfully, but pays lessattention to the forces which shape the ‘trading networks’ he describes.23 Yet his chronology
alone suggests a need to give more weight to politics and economic governance than the‘British world’, network theory, and cultural economy allow.
This article restates the existence and sketches the shape of a framework of empireCommonwealth political economy which in turn affected economic transactions andnetworks. This emerged in the late nineteenth century, reached a zenith between the wars,
and rapidly eroded after the Second World War. The praxis of economic governance was inturn shaped by the broader international context within which it operated.24 It is not claimed
that this Empire-Commonwealth framework was necessarily a primary driver of economictransactions. The practices of governance associated with the Empire-Commonwealth were
often weak by comparison with the powers of nation states (including dominion
governments) or with the more binding post-1945 forms of international and regional
association. Nor is it claimed that economic governance was harmonious. It was often
fractious.25 Still until the late-1940s, a political economy of the empire-Commonwealthexisted. Its operation was real, and at least no less significant than pre-1945 forms ofinternational cooperation.26 Conversely, by the 1970s the post-colonial Commonwealth did
19 Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, pp. 14, 45-63.
20 Dilley, ‘Empire, Globalisation, and the Cultural Economy’.
21 Thackeray, Forging a British World.
22 Ibid., p. 7.
23 For a critique of network-focused approaches, see Potter, ‘Webs, Networks and Systems’.
24 For a similar argument about British imperial power more broadly, see Darwin, ‘Globalism and Imperialism’
25 Barnes, ‘Lancashire’s ‘War’ ‘.
26 Jennings, ‘Constitution’, p. 474.

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not possess the same possibilities of economic governance.27

III Methods of Governance in a Decentralised Supranational Polity
The Empire-Commonwealth evolved practices of economic governance, defined here as
institutional frameworks shaping aspects of economic of activity. These were built on thevoluntary cooperation of the UK and Dominion governments, combined with managementof the colonial empire. The UK government retained some functions and a distinctive role,a role that tended to be exercised at the sufferance of other members. The EmpireCommonwealth’s modes of cooperation shared certain key attributes grounded in anunderlying concern to maintain and maximise the autonomy of individual members. Noneof these modes of cooperation were necessarily exclusive to Empire-Commonwealth level.
In many areas there was overlap or interplay with international level cooperation.
Economic governance on this basis could be exercised through five main practices, none
mutually exclusive. First, UK institutions performed certain key functions. For example,
the Bank of England managed the sterling bloc/area from the 1930s to the 1950s while the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council often served (unless restricted as by the Australianconstitution) as the highest court of the empire. 28 Second, the UK government could
provide exclusive or disproportionate subsidies. This might take the form of financing
communications networks (shipping, postal systems, telegraphs, airlines and the like) or
sponsoring the production of knowledge framed by the Empire-Commonwealth. Examplesof the latter might include the funding of the Imperial Institute in South Kensington or the
Dominions Royal Commission which began in 1909 and reported in 1918. 29 Third,
unilateral legislative action promoted harmonisation by replicating laws elsewhere(generally but not always the adoption of UK legislation). This happened frequently withaspects of commercial law. Fourth, individual members’ actions could by design or effectcreate a distinctive Empire-Commonwealth political economy. Canada’s unilateral adoptionof imperial preference in 1897 falls into the latter category.30 So too might the United
Kingdom’s Colonial Stock Acts (that created some de facto preference in investment forthe dominions), the Empire Settlement Acts of the 1920s, or the creation of the Empire
Marketing Board.31 Fifth structured voluntary bilateralism or multilateralism: agreements
between members or all members were brokered within the crucible of the EmpireCommonwealth. The Ottawa trading agreements of 1932 were a series of bilateralagreements resulting from bilateral negotiations held in parallel at the imperial
conference.32
The array of practices and the areas over which they were applied were widely recognisedby contemporaries. They were reflected in and reinforced by the periodic colonial andimperial conferences. The possibilities of economic governance also generated a broader
ecosystem of economic thought out of which policies emerged. Their existence
underpinned temporary commissions and permanent advisory bodies which increasingly
27 An important and neglected overview can be found in Lloyd, ‘Britain and the Transformation’. For generalaccounts of the post-colonial Commonwealth both sceptical and sympathetic, see McIntyre, Significance of theCommonwealth; Srinivasan, Rise, Decline, and Future; Shaw, Commonwealth; Murphy, Empire’s New Clothes.
28 Schenk, Britain and the Sterling Area; Wheare, Constitutional Structure, pp. 24-25, 45-54.
29 Constantine, ed., Dominions Diary; Dominons Royal Commission, Final Report; Mackenzie, ‘Imperial
Institute’.
30 Skelton, Life and Letters, pp. 52-57.
31 Jessop, ‘Colonial Stock Act’; see also Reference 33.
32 Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy.

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formed to promote Empire-Commonwealth coordination: for instance, the Dominions
Royal Commission (1909-1918), the Empire Marketing Board (established in 1926), or the
Imperial Economic Committee (established in 1924). 33 The Empire-Commonwealth’s
economic governance was also reflected in civil society. At least two major pan-EmpireCommonwealth business associations were active across the interwar period and persisted
into the 1970s: the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire (originatingin 1886), and the Empire Producers Association (originating in 1916).34 The Royal Empire
Society formed its own trade section.35 There were also political lobby groups or leagues.
To take only British examples, some were fleeting and specialised, like the Empire
Resources Development Committee, which formed in the aftermath of the First World War
to advocate state intervention to facilitate colonial economic development.36 Others werelarge scale, including the succession of bodies which advocated imperial preference (seebelow) most notably the Empire Trade League and the Tariff Reform Association prior to1914, and, the Empire Industries Association from the mid-1920s.37
The rich seems of discussion of political economy which emerged from official, semiofficial and unofficial channels reflected the potential for Empire-Commonwealtheconomic governance to touch on range of policy areas. In turn we will now explore how
they were applied in the fields of trade, currency, migration and investment, taxation, law,and transport and communications.

IV A Provisional Anatomy of Empire-Commonwealth Economic Governance,
c.1887-1939
A. Markets: Preferential Trade
No single policy symbolised Empire-Commonwealth political economy more thanpreferential trade. The concept, a revival of pre-1850s practice, was for empire members tocharge lower tariffs on each other’s products than foreign goods, even those enjoying ‘Most
Favoured Nation’ status. The idea was floated in the fair-trade debates of the 1880s,
pursued assiduously by Canadian businessmen and politicians in the 1890s, and became thecentrepiece of Joseph Chamberlain’s Edwardian challenge to free trade. Canada in 1897
first included imperial preferences in it tariff schedules unilaterally, followed by New
Zealand in 1902, Australia in 1907, and the newly united South Africa in 1910.38 The UK’scommitment to free trade kept it aloof until the introduction of the protectionist McKenna
Duties in the First World War also saw some preferences introduced for the empire in
Britain. Many of these unilateral preferences persisted in the 1920s, although some
McKenna duties were lifted. The UK rejected Conservative proposals for morecomprehensive imperial preference in the 1923 election. Other Empire-Commonwealthmembers began pursuing bilateral preferential deals. Canada signed one with Australia in
1931.39 Thus notwithstanding patchy implementation, imperial preference persisted as a
33 Dominons Royal Commission, Final Report; Barnes, ‘Bringing Another Empire Alive?’; Constantine,‘Bringing the Empire Alive’; TNA, DO 222 (Imperial Economic Committee).
34On the FCCBE, see Dilley, ‘Politics of Commerce’; Dilley, ‘Trade after the Deluge’; Dilley, ‘Un-Imagining
Markets’. On the Empire Producers Association, see Marrison, British Business, p. 302.
35 Reese, History of the Royal Commonwealth Society, pp. 161-176.
36 Killingray, ‘Empire Resources ‘.
37 Thompson, Imperial Britain, pp. 9-109; Marrison, British Business, ch. 12.
38 Sullivan, ‘Revealing a Prefence’.
39 Wells, Imperial Preference, pp. 8-9. [Sydney Chamber of Commerce], Commerce, XXI, 2, 1 Feb 1932, pp.

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recurrent economic and political idea.
Even ad hoc preferences spawned regulation. One important question concerned
certification of origin: if imperial goods got preferences what proportion of empire-content(raw materials and labour) were required to be eligible? The various dominions never had acommon definition. The documentation required to administer customs preferences led toan entire subsidiary conference, the Imperial Customs Conference of 1921 which
recommended standard forms (fitfully adopted) on which varying definitions could be
expressed.40 While all international trade required certificates of origin (for example toadminister Most Favoured Nation status), preferential trade raised particular problems
which gave empire trade a distinctive identity. Moreover, even if the UK did not havesignificant preferences for the dominions by this point, UK exporters had a clear stake indominion preferences, illustrating how unilateral and uncoordinated decisions bygovernments nonetheless created a form of pan-Empire Commonwealth economic
framework for commercial enterprise.
Preferential trade came to fruition in the 1930s. The UK finally abandoned free trade in
the wake of the Great Depression. Subsequently a comprehensive set of bilateral deals werenegotiated at the Ottawa Imperial Economic Conference in 1932. The Ottawa agreements
were to operate fixed terms, introduced notice periods for cancellation, and createdmechanisms to decide which industries in the dominions should or should not be protected
through tariff boards. They enhanced the dominions’ access to UK markets compared toforeign primary producers. It is usual to point out, as manufacturers groups in the UK soon
complained, that the agreements and tariff boards often gave UK exporters advantages
against foreign rather than domestic competitors but did not significantly dent dominion
protectionism.41 Even so the agreements provided a clear framework for tariff relations andfor subsequent changes in tariff relations. The degree of certainty provided may well havehelped encourage intra-Empire-Commonwealth trade, a claim made vociferously by its
defenders in the late 1940s and 1950s.42 Whatever the practical limitations, the Ottawa
agreements epitomised the possibilities as well as limitations of Empire-Commonwealtheconomic governance.
Reaching their apogee in the Ottawa system, trade preferences embodied the broader
reconciliation of autonomy with unity that lay at the heart of a concept of the EmpireCommonwealth. This was why they persisted across the decades, while schemes for Empire
free trade (or, as Joseph Chamberlain put it when floating the idea in the 1890s, an imperial
zollverein) failed to gain traction. 43 These schemes (whether outlined by Joseph
Chamberlain or Lord Beaverbrook) required a customs union with a common tariff,something unacceptable to the dominions and Britain. As Leo Amery explained on the eveof the Ottawa conference: ‘Mutual preference is the practical expression of a desire tocooperate without that surrender of economic and political autonomy which is involved inany formal customs union with internal free trade’. 44 Only preference enabled theexpression of simultaneous unity and autonomy at the heart of Empire-Commonwealtheconomic governance.
56-57.
40 Cmd. 1231: Imperial Customs Conference, 1921.
41 Drummond, Imperial Economic Policy.
42 University of Warwick, Modern Records Centre, MSS 221/4/1 [Empire/Commonwealth Industries
Association], 1 Annual Reports, 1926-1976: Annual Report, 1947.
43 London Chamber of Commerce Journal, June 1896, pp. 6-7.
44 Observer, 10 April 1932.

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B. Currency
By the end of the Second World War, a further area of cooperation – almost but not entirely
coterminous with the Empire-Commonwealth – had risen to prominence: currency. By thatpoint – excepting chiefly Canada – most of the countries of the Empire-Commonwealth(and some non-Commonwealth countries) pooled their export earnings in London and used
these balances to settle payments with the non-sterling world. The Bank of England playeda crucial role in managing the Sterling Area. The Area emerged from the looser run sterling
bloc which formed in the 1930s following Britain’s departure from the gold standard in1931 and included far more non-Commonwealth members. Although the Sterling Area was
not coterminous with the Empire-Commonwealth, the coincidence was close enough forcontemporaries to elide the two frequently and for the management of the area to be
discussed in Commonwealth fora.45 In the 1940s and 1950s the deficit particularly with thedollar bloc (US AND Canada) intensified transactions within the sterling area, and hence
largely intra-Commonwealth economic transactions and discussions.46
Currency was less obviously an attribute of empire-Commonwealth political economy
prior to the final abandonment of the gold standard in 1931. If during this period there wasless of a distinctive Empire-Commonwealth monetary identity, it was because the gold
standard, and in Asia bimetallic or silver standards, subsumed this possibility within
broader international frameworks. In India in 1898 the currency was shifted to a gold
exchange standard which preserved silver internally while shifting to settlements in gold
externally.47 Nonetheless debates on currency took place at Empire-Commonwealth level.
At the early Congresses of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire advocates of bimetallism
such as Henry Hucks Gibbs (a London merchant banker whose trade focused on Asia)
pushed the remonetisation of silver with the interests of India (or rather British traders inIndia) prominently emphasised in his case.48 In the late-1920s pan-Empire-Commonwealthchallenges to the gold standard re-emerged. Monetary radicals formed pan-EmpireCommonwealth networks to advocate alternatives. For example, stinging critiques of thegold standard emanated from the desk of A. De V. Leigh, secretary of the London Chamberof Commerce and of the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce. They
circulated widely even finding their way to the desk of William Mackenzie King, Canada’s
Liberal prime minister.49
In the end the sterling bloc formed de facto as Britain left the gold standard, becoming
much more tightly regulated and controlled during the Second World War.50 By osmosis
most of the empire-Commonwealth, excepting Canada, became a currency bloc. However,the Sterling Area was always conceived as a distinct entity. Perhaps as a result currency
never acquired the symbolic significance of imperial preference.

C. Investment and Emigration
At the 1923 Imperial Economic Conference, Australian Prime Minister S. M. Bruce
encapsulated the needs of the dominions as ‘men, money, and markets’, a tryptic woven
45 Miller, Commonwealth in the World, pp. 77-79.
46 Schenk, Britain and the Sterling Area.
47 Keynes, Indian Currency and Finance.
48 Chamber of Commerce Journal, 5 August 1886, pp. 33-42; see also Green, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism’.
49 Archives Canada, MG 26/J1/ 197/167516-20 (W. L. Mackenzie King Papers): McGeer to Mackenzie King, 1

Nov 1933, Leigh to McGeer, 16 Oct 1933, King to McGreer, 6 Nov 1933.
50 Fieldhouse, ‘Metropolitan Economics’, p. 95.

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into a homespun Commonwealth political economy by Sir Keith Hancock. 51 Imperial
Preference in part covered the markets, but men and money were indeed just as central tothe underlying political economy of the core of the Empire-Commonwealth, Britain and theold dominions. The old dominions were the products, as James Belich has so fluidly
charted, of nineteenth century settler capitalism (and settler colonialism). 52 Dramatic
imports of migrants and capital, both chiefly originating in Britain, underlay the dramatic
expansion of all the dominions down to 1914. 53 After 1918 the supply of both werecurtailed, money more so perhaps than men. Bruce’s call at the imperial conference was
essentially for the use of the mechanisms of voluntary association to be deployed in thedominion’s favour to increase their share of a smaller pie, a call based on their supposed
virtues of loyalty and hence membership of a broader polity.54
In the late nineteenth century, the flows of men and money were not particularly
manipulated by the UK government, although the dominions themselves ran intensive
campaigns to court migrants and woo investors.55 Edwardian Canada excelled at this as
Wilfrid Laurier’s Liberal government, supported in London by the Canadian HighCommissioner Lord Strathcona, boosted the ‘last best west’. 56 Strathcona was also
instrumental leading a campaign playing on the ‘loyalty’ demonstrated by colonial
contributions to the second Anglo-Boer War to secure the passage of the 1901 Colonial
Stock Act. This allowed trustees to invest in certain colonial stocks and hence allowed
colonial and dominion governments privileged access to investment funds.57
Other institutions provided investors with some reassurance when comparing imperial
and foreign investments, particularly the role of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council as the highest court of appeal for much of the empire (except where specifically
restricted).58 After the Great War, the potential for intervention became greater. Overseas
investments were subjected to greater regulation and direction by the UK government in
the 1920s and 1930s.59
There were also moves to promote intra-imperial migration, for instance the Empire
Settlement Act of 1922 sought shift the flow of migrants towards the dominions. 60
Underpinning the large movements of migrants lay deeper conceptions of citizenship(admittedly vague as Rachel Bright argues in this journal) tied up with common status assubjects of the crown.61 These conceptions could ease movements of labour within the
Empire-Commonwealth. At the same time, as Bright has shown, curtailing movements ofAsian migrants within as well as into the Empire (and doing so in ways that werecompatible with supposedly overarching notions of imperial citizenship) were a central
feature of discussion in Colonial and Imperial Conferences. Thus the 1897 conferenceagreed to the extension of the so-called Natal education test.62 Regulating migration and
51 Hancock, Problems of Economic Policy.
52 Belich, Replenishing the Earth; Veracini, Settler Colonialism. For the original use of the term ‘settler

capitalism’, see Denoon, Settler Capitalism.
53 Harper, ‘British Migration’.
54 Constantine, Emigrants and Empire.
55 Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation, pp. 89-91; Dilley, Finance, Politics, and Imperialism, pp.
103-110.
56 Wilson, Lord Strathcona, pp. 488-507.
57 Jessop, ‘Colonial Stock Act of 1900’.
58 Dilley, Finance, Politics, and Imperialism, pp. 92-97; Smith, ‘Patriotism’.
59 Fieldhouse, ‘Metropolitan Economics’, p. 39.
60 Constantine, Emigrants and Empire.
61 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship; Bright, ‘Migration, Naturalisation and the British world’.
62 Bright, ‘Asian Migration and the British World, 1850-1914’ See also Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the
Global Colour Line.

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citizenship thus became a key attribute of Empire-Commonwealth governance.

D. Taxation
Movements of people and money also created a further area of pan-Empire-Commonwealthcooperation: double taxation.63 The possibility that personal or commercial income could
be taxed twice as it moved across state boundaries was not unique to the EmpireCommonwealth, but true of all global flows of income. Nonetheless the very intense levels
of investment and trade combined with the tendency (at least until the mid-twentiethcentury) for wealthy individuals in the dominions to return to the UK made the issue
particularly acute.64 Practices informal cooperation and the widespread imagination of the
Empire-Commonwealth as a single political entity strengthened the possibility for action.
Double taxation entered discussions in business circles and at colonial and imperial
conferences in the Edwardian period. Louis Botha raised the double taxation of death
duties at the 1907 Imperial Conference.65 However the First World War made the issue
more acute. Until then dominion finances had not rested significantly on direct taxation.
The war changed that even as levels of taxation also rose in the UK. A further problem
arose in that the UK tended to tax the income of residents while the dominions tended todetermine liability by the location at which income was earned. This created overlapping
liabilities. During the war business leaders in London pursued the matter both through thechambers of commerce movement and its imperial outworking – the British Imperial
Council of Commerce, and through the formation of the Association to Protest Against the
Duplication of Income Taxation in the Empire.66 Wartime conditions gave the movement a
particularly powerful rhetoric, for during times of war the empire looked most like a single
polity. Thus in 1916 one correspondent to The Economist argued that:
There is no imperial budget or imperial revenue, and every part of the Empire has
furnished its own war contingent. It results that… imperial expenditure for war
purposes falls on the municipal budget of each component of the empire… But anAustralian resident in England pays a double contribution. He pays for the war
contribution in Australia for the Australian contingent and again another contribution in
England for the British contingent.
The situation was ‘unjust’ and ‘discriminatory against one class of the king’s subjects’. 67
Finance Bills in 1915 and 1916 allowed some liability in the dominions to be offset against
UK tax liabilities. The matter was taken up at the 1917 and 1918 Imperial War Conferencesby the Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Premiers. 68 While delayed until theimmediate aftermath of the war, in the early 1920s double income tax arrangements wereconcluded between the UK and most imperial locations, and the modus vivendi arrived at
63 For one of the few overviews of double taxation, see Mollan and Tennent, ‘International Taxation’.
64 Sleight, ‘Reading the British Australasian Community’; Harper, Emigrant Homecomings.
65 Australian National Archives, A461 D344/3/3: Part 1: Double Income Tax: Great Britain and theCommonwealth 1907- 1945: ‘Memo’, N.D.
66 TNA, T/1/11926/11806: Memorials on Double Income Taxation, 1916; T/1/11654/15268: Finance Bill 1914.
Clause 5. Effect Upon Investments and Re-Investments Within the Empire: Resolution of the Executive
Committee of the British Imperial Council of Commerce, 24 July 1914; T/72/837/1969: Deputation from the
Association to Protest Against the Duplication of Income Taxation in the Empire, 5 April 1918.
67 G. Burgess, Letter to Ed, Economist, 23 Sept 1916, p. 527; also ibid., 2 Sept. 1916, p. 409.
68 Cd. 8566, Imperial War Conference, 1917, pp. 70-80; Cd. 917, Imperial War Conference, 1918, pp. 73-80.

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largely allowed UK-resident tax payers to offset some tax paid in the dominions.69
Empire-Commonwealth countries were not the only ones with which the UK negotiateddouble taxation arrangements in the interwar period.70 But arrangements were made earlyand possibly generously, notwithstanding that the UK government wished to avoid
discriminating in favour of the Empire. It is suggestive that by the 1930s the UK Treasury
considered the arrangements overly generous to the dominions.71 For the dominions suchdouble taxation arrangements constituted a subsidy shaping investment in addition to theColonial Stock Acts. This was an example of structured bilateralism within the
Commonwealth generating early and potentially significant benefits for the dominions andfor investors. Common loyalty, common citizenship, and the imagination of a virtual polity
were central to bringing these arrangements into being before similar agreements withforeign powers.

E. Law
Trade and investment all take place within a framework of law and regulation. Although it
is rather common to hold markets to be distinct from states, markets are made in part by thelegal institutions that enabled their functioning.72 Commercial Law therefore encompassed
an enormous area within which an Empire-Commonwealth political economy could beforged. The benefits of uniformity, consistently perceived by businesses mobilised throughthe chambers of commerce movement, could only be realised in a sporadic and unstablemanner given the mechanisms of governance available. Nonetheless, until the second halfof the twentieth century, and in the absence of robust international institutions or regionalframeworks, voluntary and patchy harmonisation could be better than nothing.
In the heyday of imperial federation in the 1880s and early 1890s, the chambers ofcommerce movement endorsed calls to codify the commercial law of the empire. The idea
as advocated at early Congresses of Chambers of Commerce by Professor Leone Levi in1886 and Professor Dove Wilson in 1892 core was simple. They proposed a comprehensive
codification encompassing all aspects of commercial law across the empire.73 Such a
uniform concept ultimately ran against the emerging principle of voluntary association
which condoned local variations. Still the diffusion of uniform or near uniform legislation
on a case by case basis retained leverage down to the 1930s. A number of areas of law werediscussed by businesses and found their way into the proceedings of imperial conferences:
the adoption of uniform and decimal weights, measures, and currency; the mutual
recognition of commercial arbitration awards; or uniform and mutually enforceable law on
debt, copyright, patents and trades marks.74 Laws and regulations on such matters occupied
much space in the final report of the Dominions Royal Commission published in 1918.75
The example of Bills of Lading illustrates the operation of the system, its time lags andlimitations, but also its potential to translate proposals into practice. Bills of Lading arecontracts between shipping companies and shippers for the carriage of goods. They govern
the respective liabilities of the shipping company and the shipper should goods become
69 Archives Canada, RG/25/G-1/1748/566: Double Income Taxation in the Empire, 1935.
70 Mollan and Tennent, ‘International Taxation’, p. 1059.
71 TNA, DO 35/218/10: ‘Double Income Tax Relief’, 1930; Archives Canada, RG/25/G-1/1748/566: Double

Income Taxation in the Empire, 1935.
72 Dilley, ‘Un-Imagining Markets’; North, ‘Institutions’.
73 Chamber of Commerce Journal, 5 August 1886, p. 20; ibid., June 1892, pp. 14, 47.
74 See for a typical selection, Congress Proceedings, 1906.
75 Dominons Royal Commission, Final Report.

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ANDREW DILLEY
damaged. From the third quarter of the nineteenth century, shippers (as represented throughthe chambers of commerce movement) became increasingly discontented with the growing
list of exclusions put in place by shipping companies. The problem was compounded by
the growing concentration of the shipping sector which weakened the bargaining positionof the shippers. After attempts at informal resolution, by the end of the nineteenth century
legislation was demanded. Because a bill would necessarily be signed under one
jurisdiction, usually that at point of departure, harmonisation was considered important for
simplicity’s sake and to ensure shipping companies did not evade liabilities. The campaign
on Bills of Lading persisted with minor success down to the First World War. After the war,
the issue was then pursued at international level through the newly formed International
Chamber of Commerce which, at The Hague in 1921 drew up a series of recommendations.
These were given embodiment at the UK level in the 1924 Sea Carriage of Goods Act.76
Similar legislation then diffused out and was adopted in other Empire-Commonwealthcountries – thus the Empire-Commonwealth served to promote an internationally-agreed
framework. There was one exception. For a long time, Canada preferred aligned not with
the UK but with the US Harter Act of 1893 on shipping liabilities. Thus Canada waiteduntil the US moved into alignment with the Hague Rules in the mid-1930s.77 The complex
morass of shared and partially shared laws remains to be charted comprehensively, but it isclear that its existence and possibilities animated generations of businessmen andpolicymakers.

F. Transport and Communications
Transport and Communications constituted a final major area of Empire-Commonwealthpolitical economy. They laid the foundations of the flows of goods, services, people,
money, and intervention that, in the end, underlay economic transactions in the EmpireCommonwealth. Operating through a combination of British subsidies and mutually agreed
expenditure.
A host of activities fall under the aegis of communications: postal services, telegraphnetworks, shipping subsidies, wireless telegraphy, radio, and air transportation to name but
a few.78 The creation of a network of inter-imperial telegraphic cables was one important
project where this can be seen. In the 1880s and 1890s the Canadian engineer who oversaw
the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Sir Sandford Fleming, led a campaign
across the UK, Canada and antipodes for the construction of a pan-Pacific cable with state
support.79 The campaign found support in Australia and New Zealand where the routepromised to reduce cable charges relative to the privately owned Eastern and Eastern
Extension Companies. Spending by Australian states, Canada, and the UK was required tosecure this end.80 Postal charges, coordinated across and reduced by multiple governments,
were also a late-nineteenth century development which helped integrate the EmpireCommonwealth. The imperial penny post instituted in the UK in 1898 was an act of
coordination which both symbolised integration but also facilitated integration by
76 The issue was a perennial at the Congresses of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire. See for example,
Chamber of Commerce Journal, 5 August 1886, pp. 42-48; Congress Proceedings, 1909, p. 81; Congress
Proceedings, 1924, p. 15.
77 Archives Canada, Toronto Board of Trade, MG/28/III/56/146: Transportation and Customs Committee, 20
Sept 1933; Congress Proceedings, 1936, p. 27.
78 MacKenzie and Dalziel, Penguin Historical Atlas, pp. 88-90; Porter, Atlas, pp. 148-152, 163-167.
79 Thompson, ‘Sandford Fleming’.
80 Potter, News and the British World, pp. 62-68.

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Economic Governance in the Empire-Commonwealth in Theory and in Practice, c. 1887-1975
promoting information flows. It was the product of a campaign led by individuals like theAustralia and UK-based journalist and politician John Henniker Heaton, and of
coordination between different postal systems. 81 Orders, catalogues, and other essentialcommercial ephemera all flowed more easily as a result.82 Subsidised shipping lines were
yet another area where state intervention channelled patterns of communications. Again
prior to the War, Canadian campaigners were particularly keen to secure fast steamshipservices in the Atlantic and Pacific.83 Through the first half of the twentieth century further
areas of subsidy, by the UK or by the UK with agreement from other members. Wirelesstelegraphy and later radio became prominent in the Edwardian period and in from the
1920s. Air transportation was added to shipping as a priority by the 1920s.84
All these areas required subsidies and that the lion share came from the UK state.
Communications infrastructure shaped patterns of economic transaction EmpireCommonwealth and network formation. They thus created economic possibilities. As longas the Empire-Commonwealth remained a distinctive unit of political coordination, they
helped lend it a distinctive political economy.

G. Assessment
Members of the British Empire-Commonwealth developed a high per capita propensity to
trade with each other and to draw on British investment prior to 1914 which intensified
during the interwar period.85 The principal economic relationships were bilateral, between
Britain and individual territories. There were other smaller but significant exchanges for
instance between Canada and the West Indies, across the Tasman between Australia and
New Zealand, or from South Africa northwards.86 India was enmeshed in an inter-Asian
trade system and Canada had powerful connections to the United States.87 Still, with Britain
the principal Empire-Commonwealth economic partner of most other members. Thechanging significance of Empire-Commonwealth economic relationships can therefore begauged in Figure 1 below which shows the proportions of total British trade accounted forby the empire, and specifically the dominions.
The significant and steadily growing portion of British trade with the EmpireCommonwealth and especially with the dominions cannot solely be attributed to aspects ofeconomic governance described here. Their contribution must be set aside other factors: thecultural networks described by Magee and Thompson and Thackeray; and the shifting
international economic situation, for instance growing protectionism and the relative
decline in success of some sectors of the British economy in international markets in theinterwar period. Still empire-commonwealth undoubtedly played a role, and one discernedand often deemed significant by contemporaries. Moreover and whatever its economic
impact, down to 1939 the intensity of economic exchange within the EmpireCommonwealth frequently validated the political project of economic governance.
81 Matthew, ‘Heaton, Sir John Henniker, first baronet (1848–1914), postal reformer’.
82 Potter, News and the British World, pp. 68-82.
83 Congress Proceedings, 1903, pp. 62-64, 154-155.
84 These concerns can be seen in interwar debates within the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers ofCommerce. See for example, Congress Proceedings, 1927.
85 Magee, ‘Importance of Being British?’; Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation; Fieldhouse,‘Metropolitan Economics’.
86 For examples, see Armstrong and Nelles, Southern Exposure; Tennent, ‘Management and the Free-Standing
Company’; Phimister, Economic and Social History.
87 Akita, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century British Imperialist’; Marr and Paterson, Canada, pp. 288-291.

75

ANDREW DILLEY
50.0%
45.0%
40.0%
35.0%
30.0%
25.0%
20.0%
15.0%
10.0%
5.0%

Imports from Empire/Commonwealth

Old Dominions share of all All Imports

Exports to Empire/CommonwealthDominions Share of All Exports

1935

1932

1929

1926

1923

1920

1917

1914

1911

1908

1905

1902

1899

1896

1893

1890

1887

1884

1881

1878

1875

1872

1869

1866

1863

1860

1857

1854

0.0%

Figure 1. Empire-Commonwealth and Old Dominion Shares of British Imports and Exports
Source: Schlote, British Overseas Trade, Table 20b.

V The End of Empire-Commonwealth Political Economy, 1945-1975
The empire-commonwealth system reached a zenith immediately after the Second World
War. Imperial preference remained in operation. The sterling bloc hardened into a tightly
controlled Sterling Area, managed to facilitate Britain’s war effort and then to address alarge deficit in dollars. This intensification came at the expense of dollar-using Canada
which saw trade to the sterling area curtailed. Import controls associated with the Sterling
Area along with other measures such as bulk purchasing further intensified controls. In thetropical empire a new phase of constructive imperialism (the ‘second colonial occupation’)
intensified the economic management and exploitation. With dollars scarce and much of
the rest of the world decimated, trade within the empire-Commonwealth as a proportion of
total trade peaked in the late-1940s (as Figure 2 below shows).88 The replacement ofImperial Conferences with more frequent, if less glamourous, Commonwealth Heads ofGovernment meetings, along with meetings of Commonwealth finance ministers suggested
an intensification of Empire-Commonwealth economic governance.89 Bouyed by wartime
propaganda, belief in the system amongst British and dominion businessmen and politicians
renewed.90
88 Fieldhouse, ‘Metropolitan Economics’, pp. 104-108; Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire; Shipway,
Decolonization and Its Impact, pp. 117-119.
89 McIntyre, Commonwealth of Nations, p. 354.
90 Potter, Broadcasting Empire, pp. 110-144.

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Economic Governance in the Empire-Commonwealth in Theory and in Practice, c. 1887-1975

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%

30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

1854
1859
1864
1869
1874
1879
1884
1889
1894
1899
1904
1909
1914
1919
1924
1929
1934
1939
1944
1949
1954
1959
1964
1969
1973
1978
1983
1988
1993
1998
2003
2008

0.0%

Imports from Empire/CommonwealthExports to Empire/Commonwealth

Figure 2. British Trade with the Empire-Commonwealth, 1954-2009
Sources: Schlote, British Overseas Trade, Table 20b.; Allen, ‘Commonwealth Trade Statistics’.

By 1975 the earlier mechanisms of economic governance in the Commonwealth had
either vanished or receded.91 The changes were rooted in shifting international politics andeconomics as well as decolonization in the dependent empire. First newer more powerfulinternational economic institutions emerged, some global in scope such as the World Trade
Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreements on Tariffs andTrade; others regional, most notably the European Economic Community.92 All superseded
the weak interwar international framework centred on the League of Nations. These new
institutions required in varied degrees adherence to rigid rules which ran counter to andsuperseded the loose voluntary practices seen with in the Commonwealth. The new ordercurtailed the scale, scope, and significance of that cooperation. The Commonwealth would
persist, from 1965 presided over by a secretariat, to pursue certain core values(development and anti-apartheid) but it would not promote tight knit collaboration.93
Bilateral cooperation, networks forged by history, language, the common law, migration,and culture would persist. These may perhaps have continued to generate some economic
91 For an expanded version of the argument made here, see Dilley, ‘Un-Imagining Markets’.
92 Foreman-Peck, History of the World Economy, pp. 239-242; Frieden, Global Capitalism, pp. 254-271, 283-

301.

93 Lloyd, ‘Britain and the Transformation’; Onslow, ‘Commonwealth and the Cold War’; Ball, The “Open”
Commonwealth.

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ANDREW DILLEY
advantages in terms of reduced transactions costs but not within a framework of active
economic governance.94
The erosion of the levers of political economy can only be outlined here. Change was notinstant and through the 1950s a widespread belief in the possibilities of significant
economic cooperation remained in place, for instance surrounding the 1958 Montreal
Commonwealth Economic Conference.95 As late as the mid-1960s, Harold Wilson’s Labour
government embarked on a Commonwealth trade drive in the wake of Charles De Gaulle’s
veto of Britain’s first EEC application.96 However, notwithstanding the persistent hopes ofgovernments and businessmen, the underlying realities had shifted: the field had changed.
Imperial preferences were frozen under the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Their value eroded and their pattern fell out of sync with a changing global economy.97
This took place before the UK’s pursuit of EEC membership which presaged their final
abolition.98
The Sterling Area was never intended to be a hermetically sealed zone and pressure toconvertibility came from the US from the end of the Second World War. Although several
earlier attempts to float the pound were unsuccessful, after 1958 the controls within thearea were progressively dismantled.99 Coordination of legislation remained a possibility. As
late as the mid-1960s the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce thought,
for example, that significant new Commonwealth arrangements on double taxation might
be possible. 100 But as the Commonwealth expanded, as its governments aligned withdifferent regions, and pursued radically different approaches to economic management, thesignificance of such voluntary measures receded. 101 Economic discussions at
Commonwealth level – at the newly founded Commonwealth Secretariat and within a large
penumbra of Commonwealth NGOs – focused on aid and development in the global
South. 102 As the possibility of economic governance receded, the two major panCommonwealth business lobbies – the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers ofCommerce and the Commonwealth Producers Association ceased activity. So too did theCommonwealth Industries Association – a group centred on the back-benches of theConservative party and the descendent of Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform League.103
Of course, trade (on a much-reduced scale, see Figure 2) remained between Commonwealthcountries, but that trade ceased to be distinguished by a distinct framework of economic
governance. 104
94 Bennett and Sriskandarajah, ‘The ‘Commonwealth Effect’ Revisited’. See also Murphy, Empire’s New
Clothes, pp. 203-217.
95 Miller, Survey of Commonwealth Affairs, p. 283.
96 Ashton, ‘British Government Perspectives’.
97 McKenzie, Redefining the Bonds of Commonwealth.
98 Ogawa, ‘Britain’s Commonwealth Dilemma’; Ward, Australia and the British Embrace; May,
‘Commonwealth’.
99 Schenk, Britain and the Sterling Area; Strange, Sterling and British Policy.
100 FCCC Papers, CLC/B/082/MS18291: ‘Report of Special Taxation Committee on “Double taxation within
the Commonwealth”’, 1964.
101 Miller, Survey of Commonwealth Affairs, pp. 439-462.
102 Bangura, Britain and Commonwealth Africa.
103 Dilley, ‘Un-Imagining Markets’; Cambridge University Library, GBR/0115/RCMS/11/1/ (Records of theCommonwealth Producers’ Organisation): Council Minutes 1950-1974, 18 July 1974; University of Warwick,
Modern Records Centre, MSS 221/1/1/4 [Empire/Commonwealth Industries Association]: Annual General
Meeting, 9 December 1975.
104 See the various editions of Commonwealth Trade published from the 1950s to the mid-1970s by the
Commonwealth Economic Committee.

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Economic Governance in the Empire-Commonwealth in Theory and in Practice, c. 1887-1975

VI Conclusion
This article has argued that for all the revival of interest in the economics of empire,
historians have not given enough attention either empirically or more especiallyconceptually to the interplay of politics and economics in the Empire-Commonwealth, tothe possibilities, practices, contests, and compromises of economic governance. This is not
to revive claims of British ‘control’ (the debate on British economic imperialism – exerted
through informal means – is ongoing and distinct).105 Nor is it to assert an even stranger
claim that somehow the centralising dreams of imperial federationists such as Lionel Curtis
in fact succeeded.106 Rather it is to reclaim the varied practices of governance throughwhich the decentralised Empire-Commonwealth nonetheless sought to cooperate
economically, and to prompt a re-examination of the various areas in which this governance
operated. These areas stretched beyond the totemic issue of tariffs through currency,
migration and investment, taxation, law and regulation, and transport and communications.
While some contemporaries and more post-1945 analysts have tended to question theireffectiveness, they still constitute one of the most significant attempts at supranational
economic cooperation prior to 1939. The Empire-Commonwealth framework of economic
governance existed, was recognised and debated by contemporaries, and had at least some
impact.
After 1945 the global context changed; international institutions became more binding.
The Empire-Commonwealth became a post-colonial Commonwealth with a larger andmore diverse membership, focused on development but less concerned to maintain adistinctive political economy. Global trade shifted into north-north exchanges; Britain’s
trade swung towards Western Europe. Practices of Empire-Commonwealth economic
governance faded before they were finally truncated by British entry into the European
Economic Community. Now, as the binding global architecture of the post-1945 order
again comes under acute and economically disruptive challenge, and as nation-states
reassert their sovereignty, the need for historians to recognise and study the political
economy of the Empire-Commonwealth framed precisely around the goal of reconcilingcooperation and flexibility and autonomy has become a contemporary as well as ahistoriographical imperative.
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