ABSTRACT
The basic limitation to R. C. Nash's contribution is more qualitative than quantitative in a certain sense, since the aggregate he proposed was not intended to represent the stock of all the net foreign wealth of Britain. It interrupted a process of growing interdependence and integration of the various economic systems within an institutional framework which generally rested on the canons of free trade and of the gold standard, of which Great Britain was its principal advocate. It is reasonable to suppose that the events surrounding the expansion of Great Britain's economy overseas attracted great interest and that the quantification, for single years or accumulatively, of British foreign investments acquired a symbolic significance. An almost symmetrical position was taken by A. L. Bowley, another eminent scholar of the British economy, whose relatively higher estimates were not backed by appropriate empirical proof. Few people were able to understand the evolution of British financial assets as Nash did.
