ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century the nature of Britain’s economic and social structure was every bit as important as her gross national product in determining what her relations with other countries would be; and if it has been less important after 1945, because stronger outside forces have made it so, still the connections are there, on many levels, helping first of all to explain some of the tensions in Britain’s international situation today, and secondly to indicate – though it may be merely academic – where Britain’s best international interests might lie. The climate was ‘free marketism’; and the foreign policy it gave rise to was a competitive internationalism, in succession to the co-operative and corporatist sorts. The world they believed they inhabited may have been an illusion, which was saved from being shattered sooner than it was only by the fact that, whatever their theory said, they had the power to disregard the truth.
