ABSTRACT
This chapter pursues two related lines of enquiry, one regarding the empire’s effects on the distribution of wealth within Britain, the other regarding its significance for the long-term performance of the British economy. In the first place the question of who benefited from the possession of an overseas empire has long exercised historians and it is fundamental to this study. What economic opportunities did Britain’s older settler colonies or newly-acquired tropical dependencies offer to entrepreneurs, investors and migrants? How far did the British consumer benefit from cheaper colonial sources of supply? Conversely, how big was the bill for imperial defence and (just as importantly) who footed it? A second strand of enquiry concerns the growth and diversification of the British economy. Was imperial expansion a source of strength or weakness to Britain, either in terms of finance or trade? Some scholars see the empire as the motor for the most dynamic element of the British economy – the service sector; others see it as a welcome refuge for British business from the pressures of international competition. Thus it is important to look at the British economy from several overlapping perspectives. The first section of this chapter examines the movement of people – migration is a factor frequently over-looked in the balance sheet of empire debates. The second and third sections turn to the movement of money and goods; the former the subject of a large and complex body of historiography, the latter referred to widely in the literature, yet mainly in terms of trade flows (much less has been said about the behaviour of colonial consumers or the nature of empire markets). The final section of the chapter considers the cost of the empire’s defence requirements, and balances this against the colonies’ contribution to Britain’s military effort during the First World War.
