ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with those aspects of British Imperial trade policy which directly affect foreign countries. It includes a review of changes in policy since about 1860, special attention being directed to recent developments, particularly the Ottawa Agreements and the question of the open door in relation to Imperial Preference. The open-door policy was used to justify territorial extensions of the British Empire, particularly at the time of the partition of Africa. The open-door principle has been mainly violated not by differential export duties on raw materials, which encounter most opposition from foreign countries and are evidently injurious to the interests of colonial producers, but by preferences on British goods imported by the Colonies. The Agreements reached at the Ottawa Conference in August 1932 were made possible by the Import Duties Act of the same year by which Britain adopted an extensive protective system.
