The Colonies, Economic Booms and Trade Discrimination: Britain’s Recovery Supported, 1947–53

Abstract

During the sterling crises between 1947 and 1952, the empire occupied a prominent position in Britain’s external economic relations and fulfilled a pivotal role in the discriminatory management of the sterling area. The following analysis will cast light on the question of whether British policy phased in a promising new imperial deal or was doomed from the start. The international context, sanctioned by the United States, defined the feasibility of Britain’s discriminatory management. The economic conditions in the colonies determined where commodity exports were viable. Moreover, during the 1930s and the war considerable social transformations had taken place that affected British policy in the sterling area, and the legacy of the colonial state and its economic institutions to some extent facilitated discriminatory management. After the war, socio-economic movements increasingly manifested themselves politically and challenged the colonial state. British policy was a balancing act between shielding key economic institutions and fostering austerity management to achieve export surpluses on the one hand, and securing alliances with local groups conducive to British aims on the other. Britain’s management of the colonial sterling area had a distinct political rationale. The considerable literature dealing with Britain and the colonies during the period is generally not concerned with this dimension, though it touches upon numerous aspects of the problem.¹ However, innovative research links sterling relationships with British colonial development policy. This research and the present account are genuinely complementary to one another.²