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“An Imperial Clearing House for Commercial Information and Suggestions:” The British Imperial Council of Commerce, 1911–1925
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 August 2023
Abstract
This paper departs from the preoccupation in the literature with the pressure group activity of single chambers of commerce by examining an influential but previously neglected federated business pressure group, the British Imperial Council of Commerce (BICC). Set within interlocking dynamics of British Imperial and global history and the clamour for imperial preference, it focuses on BICC's interface with the British government and its overseas dependencies in the context and vortex of Imperial economic policy, the First World War, interimperial competition, especially Anglo–German rivalry, and the vagaries of the world political economy. This essay provides insights into the internal affairs of the BICC, business–government relations in the British Empire, and the political economy of the Empire between 1911 and 1925. It demonstrates how the BICC, focused on Imperial economic governance, navigated the conflict between the prevailing ideology of laissez faire (free trade) and the clamour for xenophobic protectionism during the First World War and its aftermath. The paper highlights the limits of business pressure group activity, and the impact of the war and its aftermath on the BICC.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Research Institute for History, Leiden University
Footnotes
The quote is from “Reports of the British Imperial Council of Commerce,” reprint from The Times (London), 25 May 1911, Guildhall Library London [hereafter GLL], MS 18,282/1, “The Proposed British Imperial Council of Commerce: Need for Unification” (From a Correspondent), 5.
References
2 Chaudhri, V. and Samson, D., “Business–Government Relations in Australia: Cooperating through Task Forces,” Academy of Management Perspectives 14:3 (August 2000), 19–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grant, Wynn, Pressure Groups and British Politics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999)Google Scholar.
3 See David, Thomas and Eichenberger, Pierre, “Business and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: A Corporatist View,” Diplomatica 2 (2020), 48–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 A notable exception is Bennett, Robert J., Local Business Voice: The History of Chambers of Commerce in Britain, Ireland and Revolutionary America 1760–2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But its approach—largely local, episodic, and thematic—is markedly different from this study of the BICC, a federated intercontinental Imperial business pressure group.
5 Exceptions are Ilersic, A. R. and Liddle, P. F. B., Parliament of Commerce: The Story of the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, 1860–1960 (London: Newman Neame, 1960)Google Scholar; Dominic Kelly, “The Business of Diplomacy: The International Chamber of Commerce Meets the United Nations,” CSGR Working Paper 74:01 (May 2001); Dilley, Andrew, “The Politics of Commerce: The Congress of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, 1886–1914,” Sage Open 3:4 (2013), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Olukoju, Ayodeji, “The Pressure Group Activity of Federated Chambers of Commerce: The Joint West Africa Committee and the Colonial Office, c. 1903–55,” African Economic History 46:2 (2018), 93–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The last-mentioned is a study of a federation of British metropolitan chambers concerned with West Africa.
6 For example, Redford, Arthur, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, Vol. II, 1850–1939 (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1956)Google Scholar.
7 Dilley, “The Politics of Commerce,” 8, right column. The BICC is also mentioned on page 2.
8 In addition to the minutes of meetings, annual reports, and proceedings of congresses of the BICC, private papers of its leading lights and contemporary newspapers published in the United Kingdom and the Dominions, apart from those cited below, could shed more light on the activities and perceptions of the BICC.
9 Dilley, “The Politics of Commerce,” 2.
10 Clavin, Patricia, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Ibid., 12. The italicised words alluded to the title of John Maynard Keynes’ book. Keynes represented the British government in the League's economic conferences.
12 Lester, Alan, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar; Lester, Alan, “Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire,” History Compass 4:1 (2006), 124–41Google Scholar; Ballantyne, Tony, Webs of Empire: Locating New Zealand's Colonial Past (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
13 The League's engagement with managing the postwar global economy, a shared concern of the BICC, is studied in detail in Clavin, Securing the World Economy.
14 Bosco, Andrea, The Round Table Movement and the Fall of the ‘Second’ British Empire (1909–1919) (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), 13–14Google Scholar.
15 John Darwin, “A Third British Empire? The Dominion Idea in Imperial Politics,” in Judith Brown and Wm Roger Louis, eds., The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 64–87.
16 The white settler self-governing colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Ireland, and South Africa became known as Dominions in 1907. In spite of India's exceptional size and strategic importance, and the clamour of its nationalists, it was not accorded Dominion status.
17 Dilley, “The Politics of Commerce,” 3.
18 Lester, Imperial Networks, 5. The movement's structure, ideology, and strategies are studied at length in Bosco, The Round Table Movement.
19 The Tariff Reform movement has been examined in, among others, S. H. Zebel, “Joseph Chamberlain and the Genesis of Tariff Reform,” Journal of British Studies 7:1 (1967), 131–57; and Amery, Julian, Joseph Chamberlain and the Tariff Reform Campaign: The Life of Joseph Chamberlain Volume Five, 1901–1903 (London: Macmillan, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 Andrew Dilley, “Economic Governance in the Empire-Commonwealth in Theory and Practice, c. 1887–1975,” History of Global Arms Transfer 10 (2020), 68.
21 Clavin, Patricia, “Men and Markets: Global Capital and the International Economy,” in Clavin, Patricia and Sluga, Glenda, eds., Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 91Google Scholar.
22 The ICC is studied in Ridgeway, G. L., Merchants of Peace: The History of the International Chamber of Commerce (Boston: Little, Brown, 1959)Google Scholar; Kelly, Dominic, “The International Chamber of Commerce,” New Political Economy 10:2 (2005), 259–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kelly, “The Business of Diplomacy”; Druelle-Korn, Clotilde, “The Great War: Matrix of the International Chamber of Commerce, a Fortunate Business League of Nations,” in Andrew Smith, Kevin Tennent, and Simon Mollan, eds., The Impact of the First World War on International Business (New York: Routledge, 2017), 103–20Google Scholar; David and Eichenberger, “Business and Diplomacy.”
23 Ridgeway, Merchants of Peace, 288, cited in David and Eichenberger, “Business and Diplomacy,” 54.
24 Dilley, “The Politics of Commerce,” 1
25 Ibid., 2.
26 The Times, 25 May 1911, 4.
27 The full report of the Executive Council of the Association of Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom and a delegation from the Congress Organising Committee of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire is published in Otago Daily Times, 1 June 1911, 3.
28 The Times, 25 May 1911, 4.
29 Bennett, Local Business Voice is the only work that captures the range of these chambers of commerce.
30 The Times, 25 May 1911, 3.
31 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting, 5 June 1918, 8.
32 The Times, 25 May 1911, 5.
33 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: First Annual Report, Presented to the Annual Meeting, 1915, 32: Appendix VI: Rules.
34 The Times, 25 May 1911.
35 A full list of the chambers is in GLL, MS 18,282/1, British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings at the Inaugural Meeting held at Salter's Hall, London, 5 July 1911.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 11.
38 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of the Proceedings at a meeting of the Council and the subsequent Banquet held on 27 November 1913, 3.
39 Ibid., 15–26.
40 Ibid., 15.
41 Ibid., 18–19.
42 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: First Annual Report, Presented to the Annual Meeting, 1915, 11–12.
43 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Fifth Annual Report, 1918, 7.
44 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: First Annual Report, Presented to the Annual Meeting, 1915, enc. 1: Letter from Lord Desborough to All Chambers, 25 September 1914. All quotes in this paragraph are from this source.
45 Ibid., enc. 2: Stanley Machin (Chairman) and Charles E. Musgrave (Secretary) to Lord Desborough, 25 September 1914.
46 Ibid., 22–29, enc. 3: Extracts from replies received from the chambers. The concurrent admiration for high-quality German products and British wartime anti-German sentiments has been noted in the West African context by Olorunfemi, A., “German Trade with British West African Colonies, 1895–1918,” Journal of African Studies 8:3 (1981), 111–20Google Scholar.
47 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: First Annual Report, Presented to the Annual Meeting, 1915, enc. 3: Extracts from replies received from the Chambers.
48 Ibid. The quotes and the discussion in this paragraph are derived from this source.
49 Ibid. The quotes and the discussion in this paragraph are from the same source.
50 Ibid. The quotes and discussion in this paragraph are based on this source.
51 Ibid.
52 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: First Annual Report, 11.
53 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings, First Annual Meeting, 2 June 1915, 4.
54 Ibid., 14–15.
55 Ibid., 17.
56 Ibid., 12.
57 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting, 6 June 1917, 9.
58 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting, 5 June 1918, 4.
59 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings at the Business Conference held at Skinners’ Hall, London, 6,7 & 8 June 1916.
60 Ibid., 14. When the Secretary of State, Lord Passfield, addressed a banquet of the BICC's successor, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of the British Empire, in 1930, a newspaper reported that he “courageously represented the Government—courageously—because any Freetrader must have felt very lonely in such a gathering.” See “Chamber of Commerce Delegates,” Otago Daily News, 11 July 1930, 10.
61 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings at the Business Conference, June 1916, 14–15.
62 David and Eichenberger, “Business and Diplomacy,” 53.
63 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Third Annual Report, 1916, 11–19.
64 The body is studied in Ilersic and Liddle, Parliament of Commerce.
65 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Third Annual Report, 1916, 11.
66 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Fifth Annual Report, 1918, 10.
67 Ibid.
68 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Third Annual Report, 1916, 12.
69 Ibid.
70 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting, 5 June 1918, 26.
71 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Third Annual Report, 1916, 12.
72 Ibid., 13.
73 Ibid., 18–19.
74 Ibid., 14.
75 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting, 5 June 1918, 27.
76 GLL, MS 18,282/1, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Third Annual Report, 1916, 15.
77 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting, 5 June 1918, 4.
78 Ibid., 6.
79 Ibid., 8.
80 Ibid.
81 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Fifth Annual Report, 1918, 6.
82 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting, 4 June 1919, 4.
83 Ibid., 6.
84 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Fifth Annual Report, 1918, 2.
85 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting, 4 June 1919, 6–7.
86 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Sixth Annual Report, 1919, 9.
87 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Report of Proceedings, Seventh Annual Meeting, 8 June 1921, 8–9.
88 Ibid., 5.
89 Ibid., 7.
90 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Ninth Annual Report, 1922, 9–10.
91 GLL, MS 18,282/2, The British Imperial Council of Commerce: Eleventh Annual Report, 1924, 11.
92 Dilley, “The Politics of Commerce,” 9.
93 Ibid.
94 Clavin, Securing the World Economy, 44.
95 This is detailed in Clavin, Securing the World Economy, chapter 2: “The Multiverse of the League, 1920–1929.”
96 Kelly, “The Business of Diplomacy,” 10.