Finance, Politics, and Imperialism: Australia, Canada, and the City of London, c.1896-1914 (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies)

Andrew Dilley offers a major new study of financial dependence, examining the connections this dependence forged between the City and political life in Edwardian Australia and Canada, mediated by ideas of political economy. In doing so he reconstructs the occasionally imperialistic politic of finance which pervaded the British World at this time. In Finance, Politics and the Dominions, Andrew Dilleyoffers a major new contribution to the history of British imperialism and of the 'British World'. Drawing on a considerable range of archival, press, and other contemporary sources, he uses a comparative approach to highlight the ways in which dependence on London finance shaped political life in Australia and Canada between 1896 and 1914, and shows how these impacts were in turn shaped by the processes of economic development in these settler capitalist societies. Deploying an innovative combination of economic, business, political, and cultural history, his studythrows new light onto debates about gentlemanly capitalism, and the cultural economy of the British world. It offers fresh insights into the history of the City of London, and into Anglo-Dominion relations, and Australian and Canadian politics, and more broadly, insists on the importance of political economy in the history of the British empire Front Matter....Pages i-xix Introduction....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 Capital Imports and Economic Development in Two Settler Societies....Pages 13-41 Australian and Canadian Borrowing in the Edwardian City....Pages 42-64 Front Matter....Pages 65-65 The Rules of the Game....Pages 67-90 Risk, Empire, and Britishness....Pages 91-110 Front Matter....Pages 111-111 Canadian Politics and London Finance, 1896–1914....Pages 113-138 The Politics of Finance in Three Australian States: Victoria, New South Wales, and Western Australia, 1901–1914....Pages 139-160 Influence Stumped? The Commonwealth and the City,1901–1914....Pages 161-181 Conclusion....Pages 182-190 Back Matter....Pages 191-258