ABSTRACT
The Great Depression which began in 1929 was one of the pivots on which the twentieth-century world turned. International affairs in the inter-war years were mired in the related problems of reparations and war debts. In this sense, an economic dimension became a permanent, almost unchangeable, feature of the making of foreign policy. The coming of the depression was bound to cut into existing patterns of trade. But in the case of Germany's exports to Britain, the effects of the global downturn were then compounded by the depreciation of sterling and the imposition of British tariffs and Imperial Preference. As Clemens Wurm asserts, the economic changes had serious consequences for both foreign and domestic policy: Britain became entangled in the contradictions faced by any protectionist country and deep divisions were opened up between different sectors of the economy.
