This book illuminates British imperial policy after World War II in the context of economic policy and offers a novel argument about the end of the British empire. Economic discrimination in the empire in the late 1940s and early 1950s sustained Britain's recovery, when political control in the colonies was feasible. Subsequently, economic liberalization and the move towards financial cosmopolitanism, combined with rising constraints for economic and political management in the colonies, loosened and ultimately severed Britain's imperial link.

This book presents a penetrating new analysis of the end of the empire, located at the intersection of politics, economy and society in Britain and the colonies. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, when political control was feasible, discriminatory management of the colonies sustained Britain's postwar recovery. But synergy turned into conflict as Britain moved towards economic liberalization and financial cosmopolitanism, and found it increasingly difficult to reconcile established relations with emerging priorities. Based on a wide range of archival and other sources, this study relates political and economic developments in Britain and the colonies in original ways to overcome the gulf between peripheralist and Euro-centric explanations of postwar British imperial relations, and helps redress the neglect of the empire in modern international history. Money and the End of Empire will nourish debates in British and international economic and political history and is essential reading for historians of Britain and the empire.