Trade, Investment and Expatriate Business

Abstract

BRITAIN acquired colonial possessions in Tropical Africa for essentially defensive reasons: to ensure, in the face of the neo-mercantilist tendencies of other European states, that some parts of the African continent would remain open to British trade and investment. For a Britain committed to free trade at home and abroad, the ideal colony was an open economy, actively engaged in world trade through the exporting of agricultural and mineral products and importing of manufactures [4: 168–72]. Economic growth would occur as the natural outcome of interaction between private interests, British and local, and as a spontaneous consequence of comparative advantage in production for world markets. There should therefore be minimal restrictions on the movement of commodities, capital or labour.