ABSTRACT
Britain developed huge deficits, particularly with the United States, due to import purchases of raw cotton and wheat, which were not balanced by equivalent values of exports to the United States, due to United States tariff policy. British purchases from the United States and Germany were driving on development in these two great expanding economies, but their tariff policy was preventing any reciprocal balancing flow of payments to Britain. India produced and consumed rice and wheat, and exported both wheat and rice to Western markets, and rice east into the intra-Asian rice trade network. India was crucial to the story of the development of international economic relationships in the late nineteenth century, and indeed the emergence of a truly international economy. British sales to her imperial territory, the sub-continent of India, yielded Britain a vast surplus, which she was able to use to offset her huge deficits with the United States and Germany.
