ABSTRACT
Broadly speaking, given the unfinished business which spilled over from the end of the war into the early 1920s, the inter-war period was neatly self-contained, within the aftermath of one world war and the onset of another. The two decades were marked by renewed militarism in Europe and the Far East, and by uncertainty in the stability of the world capitalist order. The increasing threat of disruption to world peace caused by the growing power of totalitarian governments provided an uneasy background for Britain, plagued as it was by periodic bouts of social strife and unaccustomed jolts to advances in material well-being. The country’s world role as an industrial and trading nation was under pressure as two economic recessions (1921 and 1929–32) were experienced, the effect of the second exacerbated by the US stock market crash of October 1929 and the international financial crisis of 1931.
