COMMERCE AND THE COMMONWEALTH: BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS, POLITICAL CULTURE AND GOVERNANCE, 1886-1975

"Economies are not, and have never been, governed solely by nation states. In fact decisions and policies shaping economic activity have long been taken at a range of levels: local, supranational, and international. This project focuses on how businesses participate in economic decision-making at a supranational level. In particular it studies the history of relations between businesses and policy within the British Empire-Commonwealth.

In the twenty-first century, it is easy to forget that the modern Commonwealth was once a much more tightly integrated association of states. This Empire-Commonwealth was not the same as the British Empire. It was composed of Britain and the empire's self-governing colonies, later dominions, in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa as well as Éire. After the Second World War it expanded to form the Commonwealth of Nations with the admission of former colonies. Prior to the 1960s, it possessed a widely-used currency (sterling), clear consultative mechanisms (imperial conferences), a degree of cooperation on policy areas ranging from defence to regulation, including, from 1932, a co-ordinated tariff policy, although some member states opted out of some of these elements.

This research project examines how businesses across the Empire-Commonwealth came together to find common interests and shape policy. It focuses in particular on a previously neglected organisation, the Federation of Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce, which brought together delegates from 100 leading cities to debate and agree resolutions on economic policy, and then lobbied governments, especially the British government. It traces the evolution of business interactions with policy-makers within the Empire-Commonwealth from the 1880s down to the 1970s. It shows how these relations originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (often called the first age of globalisation), how businesses and states responded to the fraught economic conditions of the interwar period, and finally how intra-Commonwealth economic relations first revived and then eroded after 1945. This final period was dominated by two major themes: Britain's relations with Europe, and the emerging goal of fostering economic prosperity in less developed countries. Yet by the 1970s the Empire-Commonwealth had evolved into the much looser Commonwealth of Nations and had ceased to be a meaningful unit within which businesses mobilised. The Commonwealth persisted, but as an international association rather than a unit of supranational governance.

In retracing the history of business and the Empire-Commonwealth, the project offers new understanding of the history of the Commonwealth. In reclaiming the Commonwealth as a supranational unit of governance (but not a superstate), it opens fresh comparisons with other polities past and present. It sheds new light on the evolution of the British economy and state in the twentieth century and particularly on Britain's relations with the EEC/EU. Understanding how businesses interact with policy-making at a supranational level is of inherent interest both to historians and political scientists, but also to business leaders and policy-makers today. Three themes within the research are particularly timely: the re-examination of the economic experience of Empire-Commonwealth during the great depression of the 1930s; a reconsideration of how Britain's links with the Commonwealth shaped relations with Europe; and the generation of fresh understandings of the role of business and of supranational polities in international development. Thus, re-examining the Empire-Commonwealth, and the role played by business within the Empire-Commonwealth, is of significance not merely for our understanding of modern Britain but also promises to shed new light on the global past and present."