"Evil" British Empire in the 1940s and Beyond

Okay, this is mostly woolgathering, but...

The SEcond World War saw Britain consolidate its Empire, even as it began to fall to pieces. At the outbreak fo the war, Britain introduced a wide range of regulations to control the colonial economies, consolidating trade and preserving foreign exchange. Tight controls over colonial improts would survive the war years, becoming a tool designed to limit purchase of goods from dollar sources. In Nigeria and Tanganyika, the authorities resorted to forced labor to acquire commodities prodcuts, while the Sterling area was consolidated into at ightly bound financial unit, building on arrangements introduced after 1931.

After the outbreak of the war the bloc developed into a mechanism through which Britain could manipulate members' financial resources for the benefit of the war effort. Hard currency was pooled in an account maintained by the Bank of England, which restricted access to the funds, promoting purchases within the Empire. Moreover, Britain drew freely on thes exports without immediate payment. This only continued after the war, of course.

Moreover, the government became involved in the direct purchase and sale of commodities. The Ministry of Food, for instance, acted as the colonial state's agents, creating things like the West African Produce Control Board.

Postwar, the British state was to take a much greater role in economic planning in the colonies. In short, visions of a much more assertive Empire, a Commonwealth of ultimately self-governing states bound together by London seemed, albeit briefly, in the offing.

What went wrong? A few things. After the war Britain was basically broke, dependent on American aid and loan; and Since America had no desire to prop up a rival trading bloc, much of the ideas had to go by the wayside. The colonial office's grandiose visions of economic and social development also fell by the wayside,

Despite this, the stringent wartime regime of economic contorls was extended, causing dissatisfaction and provoking nationalism in the colonies. (In 1948, for instance, Malaya's tin and rubber exports earned Britain $170 million).

I don't know how much this could ultimately change. Ultimately, investing outside of Africa would be more profitable, and nationalism si going to be on the rise no matter what.

But even with Britain's impoverishment during the period, by the 1950s, the colonies took 13% of British exports, while Britain took about 10% of its imports from the colonies. This period marked the height of trade within the Empire, even as the groundwork for the Empire's fall was rapidly being laid.

So, imagine a Britain that emerges from the 1940s with a sort of systemic shock brought about by WW2, but signfificantly richer. In this scenario, could we see Britain trying to maintain the Sterling Bloc by force, an economic sphere stretching from the Gold Coast to Singapore?
 
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