ABSTRACT
The financial crisis of 1931 marked a turning-point in British economic foreign policy. Within a few months laissez-faire principles which had been applied for seventy years were abandoned and an active interventionist policy was introduced. The transformation of British economic policy from a passive to an active one permits of its coordination with political foreign policy, the one being used to support the other. Risk of war and deterioration of political relations are not the only difficulties preventing the adoption of a unified political and economic foreign policy. Business interests within the country may at times demand an economic policy at variance with the Government's political policy. Thus the political opposition of certain British Governments to Communism and to Soviet foreign propaganda has conflicted with the economic desire of business men for more trade. The machinery of economic diplomacy is much less concentrated than that of political diplomacy.
