When two of the symbols of Britain's nineteenth-century economic hegemony, the gold standard and free trade, were abandoned in the winter of 1931–2, British external economic relations were revolutionised. One result of the new regime of protection and preferences was that access to the United Kingdom market, long determined by market forces alone, became subject to conscious regulation. One of the awful paradoxes of the 1930s was that in a decade scarred more than most by hunger and shortage, too many products sought too few outlets: selling them became a matter of privilege. As Britain entered into a series of trade agreements, the immense size of its market helped give government negotiators considerable leverage in their dealing with suppliers.

Historians have paid full attention to economic relations with the Empire, particularly the dominions. Sir Keith Hancock's classic study appeared in 1942, and since then Ian Drummond has made full use of official records to produce his authoritative surveys of imperial economic policy. Non-imperial relations have received much less attention, especially those with European suppliers. In this book I aim to make a contribution to filling this gap, and at the same time to take an overall view of British commercial policy in the 1930s, including the domestic implications of the treaty arrangements. It is a study of British policy, based mainly on UK official documents and seeing events primarily from London's perspective.