Conclusion

The principal strength of Cain and Hopkins's study lies in illuminating possible connections between British civil society, the state and a global system of external relations during a formative period of the nineteenth century.

The authors are right in pointing out institutional and ideological legacies of the policy discourse related to a specific socioeconomic elite in Britain. But projected into the future the explanatory power of 'gentlemanly imperialism' is limited. While the financial theme is imperative in understanding Britain's imperial relationships during the period, it is not a simple reflection of 'gentlemanly capitalism'. Whether one interprets the historical construction in terms of structure or the individual social affiliation and motivation of policymakers (and both is possible in different sections of the book), if applied to a long historical period it becomes too malleable a concept to be meaningful in explaining relationships beyond the period for which it was originally conceived. A conceptualization of British imperial relations after 1945 needs to draw to a greater extent than British Imperialism on the specificity of the historical context. An analysis propelled by an argument about a historical legacy is not fully persuasive, notably because it is offered at the expense of an analysis of the influences of the imperial and international economic system, British state and instititutions, and regional complementarities or antagonisms in the specific historical period. In all these complex and interconnected areas important changes need to be discussed in more detail, not only the social legacies emphasized.

Notes

1 PJ. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (London, Longman, 2nd edition 2001). The original edition appeared in two volumes: PJ. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1888-1914 [vol.

1] and British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1914-1990 [vol. 2] (London, Longman, 1993). References below are to the second (one-volume) edition, which has been augmented with a new foreword and afterword but not been revised.

2 See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, ch. 26, especially pp. 620-40.

3 Will Hutton, The State We're In (London, Jonathan Cape, 1995).

4 Paul Thompson, 'The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism: the Financial Elite of the City of London, 1945-90', Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (3), 1997, pp. 284-5.

5 Nicholas White, 'Gentlemanly Capitalism and Empire in the Twentieth Century: the Forgotten Case of Malaya', in Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: the New Debate on Empire, edited by Raymond E. Dumett (London, Longman, 1999), 175-95.

6 Angela Redish, 'British Financial Imperialism after the First World War', in idem, 127-40.

7 'Gentlemanly Capitalism' has importantly also been invoked in studies of the City of London. For extensive recent references on the post-1945 period from this angle, see Paul Thompson, 'The Pyrrhic Victory of Gentlemanly Capitalism', Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (3), 1997, 283-304, and 32 (4), 1997, 427-40.

8 Gerold Krozewski, 'Rethinking British Imperialism', Journal of European Economic History, 23, 3 (1994), 619-30.

9 Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947-1958 (Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave, 2001 (now Palgrave Macmillan)).

10 See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 'The Survival of the Gentlemanly Order', pp. 620-2.

11 See ibid., pp. 640, 677 and A.G. Hopkins, 'Macmillan's Audit of Empire, 1957', in Understanding Decline; Perceptions and Realities: Essays in Honour of Barry Supple (Cambridge, CUP, 1997), 234-60.

12 See the essay by Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade', Economic History Review, 2nd series, VI (1953), 1-15, which has attracted a considerable following among an increasingly self-contained group of imperial historians.

13 See, in particular, Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 53-5.

14 Ibid., pp. 640-4.

15 For example, based on the arguments developed in ibid., chs 3 and 4.

16 See, for example, John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: the Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988 (now Palgrave Macmillan)), pp. 211-14, 222-35.

17 For reasons of brevity, I take the liberty of referring below to my own published work on the subject rather than directly to archival sources.

18 For structural aspects, see my Money and the End of Empire, ch. 3; for pertinent policy aspects, see ch. 4.

19 Ibid., chs 4 and 5.

20 For the policy process, see ibid., pp. 11, 17-18, 20, 66.

21 See ibid., chs 6 and 8.

22 See, for example, Joseph Schumpeter, 'The Sociology of Imperialism', in Joseph A. Schumpeter: the Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, edited by Richard Swedberg (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991); Max Weber, Economy and Society (New York, Bedminster Press, 1968); C. Buci-Glucksmann, Gramsci and the State (London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1978).

23 See, for example, B. Badie and P. Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1983).

24 Compare, for example, Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 59 with pp. 620-1, also pp. 10-11.

25 For an incisive argument about the Chamberlain period, see E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism. The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880-1914 (London, Routledge, 1995), esp. chs 2 and 7.

26 See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, p. 625.

27 See, for example, Peter Weiler, Ernest Bevin (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993), ch. 1.

28 See the well-known debates regarding Skocpol's arguments, notably P.R. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, CUP, 1985); and for an assessment of the theoretical debates, Bob Jessop, State Theory. Putting Capitalist States in Their Place (Oxford, Polity Press, 1990), ch.

10.

29 See my Money and the End of Empire, pp. 112, 160-1.

30 A good example is the controversy during the currency negotiations with Malaya in 1960: see ibid., p. 180; for the general argument, see ibid., pp. 171-4.

31 See, for example, B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick, 'An Institutional Perspective of British Decline', in The Decline of the British Economy, edited by B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick (Oxford, OUP, 1986), 1-17.

32 For a recent comparative study, see R.L. Tignor, Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945-1963 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998).

33 See B. Badie and P. Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State, part 3, ch. 2; Zara Steiner, 'Decision-making in American and British Foreign Policy: an Open and Shut Case', Review of International Studies, 13 (1987), 1-18.

34 See for these constraints Money and the End of Empire, ch. 8, and for the period of the Labour governments, ch. 4.

35 See Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, pp. 53-4.

36 Compare Susan Strange, States and Markets: an Introduction to International Political Economy (London, Pinter, 1988), ch. 2 and part III (esp. ch. 5, pp. 88-105), with A.G. Hopkins, 'Informal Empire in Argentina: an Alternative View', Journal of Latin American Studies, 26, 4 (1994), 469-84. Compare also the discussion of the definition of imperialism in D.C.M. Platt, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations', Economic History Review, 2nd series, 21 (1968), 296-306.

37 For this argument, see my Money and the End of Empire, pp. 196-9.

38 For this argument, see B.J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998).

39 The term has been invoked in research on the sterling Commonwealth: G. Zappala, 'The Decline of Economic Complementarity: Australia and the Sterling Area', Australian Economic History Review, 34, 1 (1994), 5-21.

40 See my Money and the End of Empire, chs. 6 and 8.

41 See ibid., pp.

43, 67-8, and from the complementary perspective of Japan, Kaoru Sugihara, 'International Circumstances Surrounding the Postwar Japanese Cotton Textile Industry', Discussion Papers in Economics and Business (Discussion Paper 99-06, Graduate School of Economics and Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, March 1999).

42 The key study of the escudo system is Joao Estevao, Moeda e sistema monetario colonial [Money and the Colonial Monetary System] (Lisbon, Escher, 1991).

43 See Jacques Marseille, 'La balance des paiements de l'outre-mer sur un siecle, problemes methodologiques', in La France et l'outre-mer. Un siecle de relations monetaires et financieres, Colloque tenu a Bercy les, 13, 14 et 15 novembre 1996 (Comite pour l'histoire economique et financiere, Ministere de l'Economie, des Finances et de l'Industrie, Paris, 1998), 3-26, and idem, Empire colonial et capitalisme frangais. Histoire d'un divorce (Paris, Albin Michel, 1984), ch. 15.

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Source: Akita Shigeru. Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.,2002. — 279 p.. 2002

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