ABSTRACT
One of the most striking facts about British foreign trade throughout 1913 is that imports exceeded exports. In economic language, there was a deficit on visible trade, hardly a fact which fits in with presuppositions of Victorian thrift. Shipping, the largest single contributor to invisible earnings, was one of the major British success stories of the period. American competition was strong because wood was cheap in the USA and their ships were better designed. It is ironic to note that Japan, as an industrialising country, also ran a deficit with Britain. Free trade was the source of bitter political conflict in the 1840s when the Conservative Party split over the repeal of the Corn Laws. Recent research has suggested that the rate of return on Empire securities, such as the loans of colonial governments and Indian railway bonds, was not very much higher than that available on comparable domestic issues.
