ABSTRACT
Within the context of total world economic relations, the bilateral relationship between Canada and Britain has been enduring and mutually beneficial in many ways. But it has also been a relationship that has gradually become relatively less important to both countries as their economic orientations have shifted in response to new developments, both internally and externally. These shifts are widely believed to have become especially pronounced in the past quarter of a century. This is, moreover, conceived to have been mainly the result of weakening East-West transatlantic connections in various ways, as more powerful North-South connections for both have emerged, paralleled by stronger economic relationships between Britain and continental Europe on the one hand, and between Canada and the United States on the other. Yet these shifts in the period since the end of the Second World War are clearly not of relatively recent origin. They merely represent continuing adjustments that are part of a longer historical trend.
