ABSTRACT

E. S. Brezis provided a series of data which pointed to a deficit in the British current account that was backed by documentation on Britain's substantial debt towards other countries, especially R. F. Holland. This chapter focuses on the works of two authors in particular, Seyd and Shaw-Lefevre both of whom tackled the question of Britain's international accounts as pioneers of the indirect or residual method. Indeed, in attempts to measure the accumulated capital by means of the indirect method, the annual capital income has to be determined by hypothesizing an average rate of return on the stock of existing investments at the beginning of each year. However, the most significant contribution of a scholar applying the indirect method came from Imlah, who prepared a series of the flows and stocks of Britain's foreign investments for the whole century before the First World War.