British Protectionism and the International Economy

When in the winter of 1931-2 Britain first abandoned the gold standard and then free trade, two potent symbols of its nineteenth-century international economic predominance had gone within the space of little more than six months. Tim Rooth's comprehensive study in the political economy of protectionism examines the forces behind the abandonment of free trade and the way that Britain then used protection to bargain for trade advantages in the markets of its chief suppliers of food and raw materials. One result of the depression, greatly accentuated by the rise of protectionist barriers elsewhere in the world, was to heighten the importance of the British market, and particularly the dependence of primary producers, both within and outside the Empire, on Britain. The United Kingdom government, finding itself with enormously enhanced economic leverage, was therefore able to take advantage of this in a series of trade agreements both with the Commonwealth at Ottawa in 1932 and, comparatively neglected in previous studies, with the countries of Northern Europe and with Argentina. The book examines these, the World Economic and Monetary Conference of 1933, the trade dispute with Japan and the impact of Britain's trade treaty obligations on domestic agricultural protection. The symbiosis between economic policy and the deteriorating international political environment became all the more apparent in the negotiations with Germany and the USA in the late 1930s.