Exploring Britain’s Postwar Imperial Relations

Abstract

Between the 1940s and 1960s key transformations occurred in Britain’s foreign relations and in international relations in general. Britain went through difficult years of postwar reconstruction while experiencing foreign exchange and reserve crises. The period was marked by fierce rivalry with the United States in the international economy, heated debates over Europe, and the apparently sudden and unexpected end of the British empire. The role of the sterling area for Britain increased considerably after the war, but the area then withered away in the 1960s. At the same time, Britain achieved economic recovery and created the welfare state in a changing global context. The international political and economic order was recast. After 1945, the United States — a former colony — assumed the role of guardian of the Western world, and the dollar took on the function of the world’s leading currency of international exchange which the pound sterling had occupied before the war. The West moved from the defensive protectionism of the 1930s towards liberal multilateralism in international economic relations and the full implementation of the Bretton Woods system in the 1960s. Britain and the pound were ultimately reintegrated in a liberal world economy. The periphery became embedded in a novel way in the international economy and, with the formation of many independent states, in a reformed state system too. Moreover, for the British colonies, the period brought consequential transformations in social structure and political organization. Tropical Africa experienced perhaps the only period under colonial rule during which it was clearly an economic asset for the imperial centre. Peripheral development was launched, taking on markedly different meanings for colonizers, academics and political activists.