The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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colonial markets without any difficulty and still have plenty of iron and steel
products for export
to America and Europe and cheap textiles that could compete
more than favourably with Indian home wares.
This goes back to the first half of
the nineteenth century when the parliament in Britain increasingly
adopted the
free trade ideas of Adam Smith which meant accepting the approach that
restrictive
trading barriers should be broken down in favour of one open
international trading unit where trade goods
could move freely for sale in the most
suitable market. The in-built advantage of this for Britain was
that with her
industrial and technological lead in a free trading world she could shop around
for
raw materials from the cheapest market while her manufactured goods could
easily swamp those of other
countries.

In
principle, however, a world of free trade did not require a huge empire,
since a colony would provide no
commercial advantage over a non-colonial area.
Yet Britain retained and expanded her empire because it
provided a very ready
outlet. While Britain generally purchased her imports from wherever they
were
cheapest, such as wheat from the United States or Russia rather than from Canada,
it was found
that Britain did in fact have commercial advantages by possessing
an empire. Simply, it was the stability
of colonial markets and the near monopoly
conditions that Britain was able to exercise in those areas.
So, the Australian
colonies did not require much cultivation to ensure that they bought British.
But,
in a free trade world, such a monopoly could easily drift away. For example,
towards the end of
the nineteenth century, Britain was increasingly to find that
Canadian trade turned towards the United
States.

As a
result, Britain’s power arising from trading wealth was based more
heavily upon the rest of the world
than upon the empire in both exports and
imports. As to the former, Germany, Holland and Belgium were the
biggest
buyers of British goods followed by the United States. At this time, although
Britain no
longer looked to the colonies as a major trading partner many of the

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