Between 1870 and the 1950s British exports to the Empire and Commonwealth steadily grew in terms of volume and as a proportion of all exports. To many this reflected the non-market advantages Britain enjoyed there, advantages allegedly rooted in imperial rule and the inherent Britishness of...

The belief that Britain’s empire markets were soft is well entrenched in the literature. It is, however, a belief that has been largely untested. Indeed, the literature does not even offer an explicit definition of softness. This paper attempts to fill this gap by discussing the meaning of the...